Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
October 8 Matt Villeneuve: Wisconsin's Other School System: Indian Boarding Schools
--submitted by Rich Leffler
Matt Villeneuve, UW-Madison Assistant Professor of U.S. History and Native American Indigenous Studies, spoke to Rotary about the history of Indian Boarding Schools, 1879-1975. These existed as parochial schools or under the federal government. They were intended to transform American Indians from “savagery to civilization.” There were day schools in village sites, boarding schools on reservations, and off reservation boarding schools (which could be hundreds of miles from Indigenous villages). The latter were intended by the government to “kill the Indian” in the children by taking children from their parents, language destruction (English only permitted), assimilation. Much current research on this is being done by historians such as Professor Villeneuve.
Guest Speaker starts at 18:26 minutes.
October 8 Matt Villeneuve: Wisconsin's Other School System: Indian Boarding Schools
--submitted by Rich Leffler
Matt Villeneuve, UW-Madison Assistant Professor of U.S. History and Native American Indigenous Studies, spoke to Rotary about the history of Indian Boarding Schools, 1879-1975. These existed as parochial schools or under the federal government. They were intended to transform American Indians from “savagery to civilization.” There were day schools in village sites, boarding schools on reservations, and off reservation boarding schools (which could be hundreds of miles from Indigenous villages). The latter were intended by the government to “kill the Indian” in the children by taking children from their parents, language destruction (English only permitted), assimilation. Much current research on this is being done by historians such as Professor Villeneuve.
Guest Speaker starts at 18:26 minutes.
