Native Students at Work tells the stories of Native people from around
the American Southwest who participated in labor programs at Sherman
Institute, a federal Indian boarding school in Riverside, California.
The school placed young Native men and women in and around Los Angeles
as domestic workers, farmhands, and factory laborers. For the first
time, historian Kevin Whalen reveals the challenges these students faced
as they left their homes for boarding schools and then endured an
"outing program" that aimed to strip them of their identities and
cultures by sending them to live and work among non-Native people.
Tracing their journeys, Whalen shows how male students faced low pay and
grueling conditions on industrial farms near the edge of the city, yet
still made more money than they could near their reservations.
Similarly, many young women serving as domestic workers in Los Angeles
made the best of their situations by tapping into the city's Indigenous
social networks and even enrolling in its public schools. As Whalen
reveals, despite cruel working conditions, Native people used the outing
program to their advantage whenever they could, forming urban indigenous
communities and sharing money and knowledge gained in the city with
those back home.
A mostly overlooked chapter in Native American and labor histories,
Native Students at Work deepens our understanding of the boarding
school experience and sheds further light on Native American
participation in the workforce.
