So a 1,000 children died in four schools in fifty five years between 1879 and 1934. McBride extrapolates that number to 40,000 probable deaths across 500 similar schools. Let’s overlay his claim over the child mortality rates in the general US population around that same period. The number hovers around 350 per 1,000 remember this period coincides with the Spanish flu. Does McBride present evidence of willful neglect? I don’t know, I haven’t read his paper. A 1,000 deaths spread across 55 years in four boarding schools @ an average 18 deaths per year in that period does not seem unusual to me.
These claim may be true or motivated regardless the fact that we are introspecting and trying to learn the truth speaks volumes for the kind of society we are.
Abstract from the paper cited by the Mail.
“ It examines how and why
off-reservation boarding schools promoted contagion and incubated infections with lethal consequences for many Native American students. Admitting ill students, substandard housing, overcrowding, forced labor, physical, mental, and sexual abuse, malnourishment, dietary insufficiencies, psychological trauma, and willful neglect compromised student immune systems leaving them vulnerable to pathogens. These factors also impaired immunological defenses, decreasing the chances of recovery once a student became infected. Diseases, including diphtheria, influenza, measles, mumps, smallpox, and trachoma, spread and epidemics swept through student populations. “
Author(s): McBride, Preston S | Advisor(s): Madley, Benjamin | Abstract: “A Lethal Education” explores the lethal consequences of United States educational policies that removed Native American children and young adults from their homes, placed them in institutions designed to destroy Indigenous...
escholarship.org
