| Colonizers have used language and education as tools to acculturate colonized peoples. This
thesis examines these aspects of the colonial relationship between the United States government
and Native American groups, in a historical context. It explores how language and cultural
repression by the government paradoxically created resistance to acculturation and produced
activists that preserved their peoples’ languages and customs. This is done through examining the
United States’ obligations to the education of Native American groups under the law, the
government’s Native American policy and discussing what informed changes in this policy over
time. Native American youth in the Indian Affairs system from the 1880s to the 1940s exercised
their agency at school by resisting full acculturation through the continued use of their
indigenous languages, in-spite of the potential consequences. It is this resistance to acculturation
that has led directly to the historical and modern activism, which has preserved many Native
American cultures and languages.
Key words: Native American History, Language, Education, Law, Shoshone, Apache, Day
Schools, Boarding Schools, Indian Policy, Revitalization |