“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell is a short story about a “pack” of girls raised by werewolves that are severely lycanthropic. Their parents send them to a home called St. Lucy’s run by Jesuit nuns that’s goal is to eradicate all traces of wolf culture and behavior from the girls, and assimilate them into human culture. To help them, the nuns have a handbook called “The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock”. The handbook divides each part of the “packs” development into human culture into 5 stages. The main character, Claudette, develops a lot throughout each of the 5 stages, but still has some struggles. By the end of the story, Claudette is very close to fully adapting, but still has some wolf like tendencies.…
Native Americans were pushed from their lands and forced to change their culture by the…
When the Native Americans and the girls from “St. Lucy’s” adapted to the European way of life, they both gained the ability to speak and read English. When the girls first came to “St. Lucy’s” they only knew how to speak in their native tongue, but with time, learned how to fluently speak and read English. One example of this is when the girls are at the ball with the “brothers” they were speaking in English to them. The Indians also gained this ability by getting educated by people from the English culture. Elected in office during this time Grover Cleveland, who was president in 1887, put the Dawes Act in action which converted them to Christianity, teached them to speak English, and let them live self-sufficient and independent. The girls…
Two of the negative character traits, avarice and hubris, portrayed by Claudette and Grandmother, in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, makes them evil. For example, in “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” the girls earn skill points as they progress; Claudette expresses her greed for skill points that when she is at risk of losing them she blames her sister, Mirabella, although she was trying to help. This is obvious when she says, “ I wasn’t talking to you… I didn't want your help.” Similarly, the Grandmother shows a sense of avarice when she tells her grandchildren about a suitor she once had. She says, “... She would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden…
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is a magical realism story about a group of girls, whose parents are wolves, being rehabilitated to live like human girls. They are taken to a Catholic school and are taught how to speak and act by nuns. It is about the action in the story but it can be interpreted to be about outcasts. One of the girls, Mirabella, is left out of things and doesn’t fit in, eventually she gets abandoned. This story shows us how an outcast might feel. Karen Russell’s style creates a memorable lesson.…
They proposed that Indian children be sent off reservation boarding schools. Where they would be forced to adopt white dress, manners, culture, and language. In the face of this assault on their cultures, Indians found a way to resist, adapt, and hold on to their culture identify. |…
Government has been the number one supporter of assimilation of all time in 1985 the residential schools were opened these schools had first nation youth forced to attend they were taught that they were no good and there heritage was no good and they should be like how they wanted them to be. Lena often felt the pressures that the Government has emplaced upon her living in the reservations where dogs ran freely in the roads the houses were all the…
to them. When they finally moved to the reservations, the children were forced to go to school. In…
This program is part of the PBS series American Experience. In this episode, a critical eye is cast on the early efforts by Congress to "civilize" Native Americans. This homogenization process required the removal of Native American children from their homes and placing them in special Indian schools. Forced to stay for years at a time without returning home, children were required to eschew their own language and culture and learn instead the ways of the white man. Archival photographs and clips, newspaper accounts, journals, personal recollections, and commentary by historians relate the particulars of this era in American History and its ultimate demise. ~ Rose of Sharon Winter, All Movie Guide…
ANSWER: The problem with Indian Boarding Schools was that Indian children were taken from their families to learn the American culture. These kids were made to stop dressing; speaking, thinking, and believing “like Indians”. For native girls’ assimilation to American culture consisted of training in menial occupations and in domesticity, which they…
In the short essay “Civilize Them With A Stick” Mary Dog writes about her experiences in a catholic boarding school as a child. The white race in American had a goal to civilize or integrate the Native Americans to the whites norms and values starting in 1879. They were doing this so the Native Americans became apart of the dominant society, which then was the whites society in America. They took the Native American children from their homes and from their families and placed them into boarding schools. Thousands of children were forced to live in these boarding schools their whole adolescent years. The children were abused in these so-called “boarding schools”. Many Native Americans now compare this incident to the Nazi concentration camps during world war II. The children had very strict rules and schedules. Their schedule usually went as followed, “Six A.M., kneeling in church for an hour or so; seven o’ clock, breakfast; eight o’ clock, scrub the floor, peel spuds, make classes” (Dog 565). If the children didn’t listen or were to disobey any rules they would be swatted many times by the nuns with a wooden stick. Other times they were placed in a dark boarded up room while only being fed bread and water for a week. The children were only able to see their families for just 7 days out of the 365 in the year. Many children tried to run away from the boarding school, but ultimately were found and brought back and then immediately swatted with a wooden sticks. As children got bigger and older they had thoughts about fighting back. Mary Dog, the author was one to fight back and ended up hitting one of her priests in the face after she tried to stand up for one of her fellow classmates. She was soon kicked out. The priest she hit ended up later realizing how bad the boarding school was treating the Native Americans and started standing up for them. Mary Dog wrote this…
This is another experience of Bill Wright, who was only the age of 6 when he was forced to the Stewart Indian School in Nevada, along with many other children. At first, many Native American parents have to send their children to boarding schools against their will in order to adapt of white society. Later, it turned to a choice because the Indian boarding schools were the only schools available due to the oppressive racism. Bill Wright mentions that because of the extreme desecration of Native American culture, he ended up forgetting not only his native tongue but also his original birth name. Indian to her and I said, ‘Grandma, I don’t understand you. ‘ She said, ‘Then who are…
Black Americans, segregation, and slavery. Most of the people who have studied American history recognize the inhumane actions towards people of color during the 1960’s and 1980’s. Yet, people often are not aware of the similar acts perpetrated on the Native Americans during the same period of time. The Native Americans had to suffer their past of external shame imposed on their culture and tradition by the White American society, followed by a coercion of White American culture due to the government proposal of the “Indian problem.” Nevertheless, the Native Americans maintained their pride in their identity and culture internally, within their tribes, and carried out such acts as Ghost Dance, valuing their own tradition. While it may seem paradoxical, both shame and pride of culture and identity simultaneously resonate in Native Americans today as a means of letting go of the unpleasant past and moving on to the future with a new hope.…
The children were forced and taken away from their homes and families by clerics and government officials and sent away for retraining. The priests and nuns deprived them from speaking their ancestral language, and practicing their religion and culture was banned. The larger purpose of the residential schools other than education was to eliminate the culture from Canada. It was not the intent to educate the children, instead teach them tasks so they could acquire positions as maids and laborers. “The problem with the Indians is one of morality and religion,” -Reverend A. E. Caldwell. The children were removed from their cultural environment and were placed in an area where they were completely isolated and the result was transmission and elimination. The parents were not aloud to visit their children nor were the children aloud to contact home. The children…
Native American education delineated social responsibility, skill orientation, political participation, and spiritual and moral values. The cardinal goals of Native American education were to develop the individual’s latent physical skills and character, inculcate respect for elders and those in authority in the individual, and help the individual acquire specific vocational training (Franklin, 1979). Native American education was also for developing a healthy attitude toward honest labor, developing a sense of belonging and encouraging active participation in community activities. Both boys and girls had equal access to education. Boys were taught by their fathers, uncles, grandfathers, and other male elders. Girls were instructed by their mothers, aunts, grandmothers, female elders and other members of their families. Sometimes, both boys and girls received instruction at the feet of either male or female elders (Mould, 2004). There were barely any dropouts and the community ensured that every child received a full education.…