Melissa D. Parkhurst

"Music has always been of vital importance to Indian people. For some Native groups, their very creation is predicated on it." So begins Melissa Parkhurst's new, focused history of students at Indian boarding schools, To Win the Indian Heart: Music at Chemewa Indian School, published by Oregon State University Press as part of its collaborative First Peoples series.

Chemewa Indian School in the Willamette Valley of Oregon is one of the oldest, continuously operating federal boarding schools for Native American children. Music classes involved memorizing school songs that promoted the school's goals and teaching philosophy, often the goal of assimilation and "social reconditioning." Music was often used in extracurricular activities as a way of "reinforcing Anglo-European artistic sensibilities" in order to doesn't or even erase Indian culture. Eventually, students learned to use their own and traditional music as a form of rebellion against the school's assimilation campaign.

Parkhurst relies on archival records and oral histories of Chemewa alumni to present a detail-rich and thoughtful examination of the way music shaped the lives of children sent to Indian school.… (plus d'informations)