Summary Of Dr. Shoemaker's Lecture On The Indian Reservation

What research questions is the speaker trying to address ? Dr Wingo studies Dr Shoemaker's traveling lecture on public health and domestic health, house bulding policy and education in more than 14 reservations in the West.
She asks herself :
To what extent was the confinement of the Crow Indians in reservations a huge cultural shift ?
How were the Indians' traditions in conflict with the new constraints imposed by this new way of life and Dr Shoemaker's rules ?
What were the causes of the bad public health in the Indian reservations ?
What was the impact of Dr Shoemaker's lecture on the Indians' lives ? How did Dr Shoemaker try to influence the Indians' habits ?
How do these lectures take place in the broad context of white supposedly “supremacy”
over Natives ?

What is the nature of the date that she uses to address the questions ? Dr Rebecca Wingo mainly uses pictures of Indians' houses, reservations and pictures from Dr Shoemaker's lectures to answer the questions mentioned above.

What do you perceive to be the challenges she faces in conducting her research ? Dr Wingo can only uses pictures to catch the Indian experience in the reservation in the early 20th century, since there were no Natives writings on their own feelings, the Crow Indians shared memories at speaking, there is necessarily a bias between what is shown and the truth. Moreover, these pictures are parts of a rhetoric, so they hardly can be studied alone but need to be compared to historical records in order to detect the disjonctions between the pictures and the events' reality.
In brief, Dr Wingo draws conclusions on an entire society based on few pictures, it seems quite limited to be convincing.

Does she provide answers to her own questions ? If so, what are they ? First of all, Dr Wingo explains how Crow families were torn apart when children were sent to boarding schools, that is the first cultural change experienced by the Indians. Then, the Crows were confined in reservations and by the end of the 1880s, their thousand-year-old way of life in tipis came to an end. But, for the Crow Indians, tipi was their second mother, so it is a huge cultural shift, from tipi to houses built in concrete. There are accounts of elders crying outside of their new lodges because they could not sleep in. Therefore, the Indians built their own houses to look like their oiriginal lodges, for instance, with no windows and the door facing east.
It caused indeed bad ventilation in the houses and favored the spread of disease. Moreover, the Crows continued to mainly build one-room houses, so everyone slept in the same room, which was also used for cooking and eating, and the germs spread even better. Finally, the Crows continued their tradition to invite people in their house, like they did in tipis, so they small houses became quickly overcrowded, yet warmer, which deceases the ventilation of the room and thus increases the risk of disease. Consequently, the death rate in the Crow reservation was 5 times the birth rate, in the United States in general, the death rate was 1 out of 8, and tuberculosis was the main
disease. That is the assessment made by Dr. Shoemaker in 1910, the health condition of the Crow reservation is really bad, mostly because the Crows are ignorant of illness' causes. Consequently, Dr Shoemaker decided to teach them how to live sanitarily, or in another words, he forces white domestic standards in Indian houses. Dr Shoemaker showed pictures during public lectures in reservations juxtaposing pictures of camp life and house life. Basically, he uses pictures of bad examples and compare them with good examples. He visually elevated the concrete house in juxtaposition to the tent, to give the impression that the first type of lodge is better. Dr Shoemaker tried to demonized the one-room cabin with no windows that the Crows usually built, and increased the risk of disease, by, for instance, showing a picture of two Indians living in one room, used for cooking, as prove the presence of dishes on the floor, and sleeping and comparing it to another picture of a clean kitchen. In the first picture, one Crow on the floor is visibly suffering from tuberculosis. Dr Shoemaker also used pictures depicting the modern science fighting the Indian primitive traditions, to promote “fresh air, sun light, good food and rest”. Dr Shoemaker's slides introduced the Indians to the new medical progresses, by presenting people getting a health exam or pictures of microscope. There were also series of pictures of children affected by tuberculosis, with bones' distortions, to especially appeal to mothers and scare them by showing what will happen to their children if they do not treat them right. Dr Shoemaker also used mottos to captivate the Indian audiences, such as “Don't live in room where there is no fresh air” or “Don't spit on the floors, sidewalk, or any public place” since it could contamine others.
Dr Shoemaker's slides simply associated camp life with death. In another binary construction, Dr Shoemaker showed one picture of a messy and dirty tent, with a dog wandering aroung the food eaten on the ground, next to a picture of an orderly set table in a dining room where the floor was properly swept and people sat on chair to eat. Of course, the second picture was, once again, visually elevated compared to the first one, but, moreover, near the tent could be seen four people, two men and two women, and, especially, no children at all, as if camp life inevitably signified death. Indeed, one of the woman on the floor has short hair, which means, according to the Crow tradition, that she is mourning the death of someone, probably her child. The message is clear with these two pictures, if the Crows wanted their children to grow up healthy, they needed to live in a house. However, in the picture of the camp life, there is a child, but Dr Shoemaker probably asked him to hide behind a pole, otherwise, the picture would not have proven his point. Since Dr Shoemaker traveled and held his conference in many places, it is thus logical to wonder about the real impact of Dr Shoemaker's lectures on the Indians but also on the White officials.
Shoemaker's campaigns did lower the death rate, there were indeed “good” Indians who followed the sanitary rules and of whom pictures were taken, even if these pictures were surely orchestrated by Dr Shoemaker, there was probably some truth in them. Gender rules were also reinforced by Dr Shoemaker's lectures. Indeed, in his slides, Indian women are often presented as submissive, taking care of the domestic chores such as sweeping the floor or cooking. Dr Shoemaker also sent reports to the Commissioner in the Indian service, who was at the head of the reservation and, depending on the circumstances, put people in quarantine for tuberculosis. Finally, Dr Shoemaker's lectures strenghtened the feeling of White supremacy, since Indians were considered as curiosities that could be studied. Dr Shoemaker took pictures of ill Crows and displayed them around as oddities or possible subjects of experiment. Consequently, Dr Shoemaker's speeches were used as a tool for colonialism, such as in the Northern Advocate, a New Zealand journal, which used Dr Shoemaker's work as a model on how to deal with their own Natives. Dr Shoemaker might have geniunly wanted to help the Crows, but the stress caused by the forced enclosure in reservations was the main reason to catch
tuberculosis. To conclude, Dr Shoemaker's lectures were somewhat efficient but clearly misguided, especially since Dr Shoemaker himself was responsible for the spread of tuberculosis. Indeed, when he was physician in Carlisle Indian School, an Indian boarding school, Dr Shoemaker sent back dying children from tuberculosis to their homes, thus, adults would contract the disease too.