Tag Archives: colonialism

Cultural erasure: Western centralsim in Native American boarding schools

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The Native American boarding school program, more commonly referred to as American Indian Boarding Schools, was a program meant to erase the native American culture from the land. The program coerced Native American families into sending their children to these boarding schools, which were meant to assimilate the children into white American culture. Some of the older kids there did fight back and then were physically punished by being beaten 1. The younger kids who were brought to the schools were never able to be assimilated into the culture their parents were part of, resulting in their returned being outsiders to their own families.

Rules for the Indian School Service / Office of Indian Affairs

240. Instruction shall be given in music at all schools. Singing shall be a part of the exereises of each school session, and, whenever practicable, instruction in instrumental musie may be given. The formation of school bands should also be encouraged. – Office of Indian Affairs

The important thing to pay attention to in this quote is the erasure of Native American’s own musical traditions. This is very intentional, and we can see it in the quote. Saying “Instructions shall be given in music” and not specifying any particular style of music, therefore implying a Western music style.

Ayer 389 C2 1915-16

There is, too, a vocal department, which includes the classwork and singing exercises, where all are taught the rudiments of music. – Carlisle Indian Industrial School

We can also see this pattern of assuming Western music is the only form of music which is worth teaching in another school’s records. Showing that the Native American children need to be tough music and identify their traditional music as worthless. This careful framing of the education allows the colonizers to morally push away any doubt they had because they see the people they are “educating” as primitive and none of their wisdom as useful.

 

Bibliography:

Carlisle Indian Industrial School. 1913. Catalogue and Synopsis of Courses, United States Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Carlisle: Carlisle Indian Press. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/SearchDetails/Ayer_389_C2_C2_1915#.

Office of Indian Affairs. 1898. Rules for the Indian School Service / Office of Indian Affairs. Washington, D.C., United States: Government Printing Office. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/SearchDetails/Ayer_386_U5_1898?searchText=Music&showSearchMessage=False&performingNewSearch=True#.

1Parker, E. S. (1846). Ely Samuel Parker scrapbooks: Vol 8 (p. 4). https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/SearchDetails/Ayer_Modern_MS_Parker_VL08#.

Misrepresentation of Indian Music

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[Portrait of Mr. John Comfort Fillmore]. Photographs. Place: National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.1

In his article, John Comfort Fillmore presents his analysis of a set of songs collected by Alice C. Fletcher. Aside from the conclusions that Fillmore draws from his harmonic analysis, he provides us with much more information that alerts us to his biases toward Native American Music. He recalls Fletcher’s request of him to analyze the songs to determine “the scale on which [they] were built,”2 but the existence of this article alone proves that this simple request made by another scholar quickly ballooned into something much more presumptuous and declarative than it deserved to be. 

Fillmore presents the scales of these songs in Western notation on the ignorant basis that, “the Indians have no musical notation, no theories of music whatsoever.”3 His deprecating comments continue when describing how he felt obligated to harmonize the versions of these songs since, “the harmonic sense of these peoples is underdeveloped.”4 Fillmore’s imposition of Western notation and harmony onto these songs is an excellent example of “colonial imposition,”5 which is a term used by Beverly Diamond in Music and modernity among First Peoples of North America to describe inadequate documentation of Native American music through the use of Western notation.

Fillmore’s intentions and biases are made clear at the end of the article, where his initial intentions of using the music of Native Americans to “test the naturalness of our own musical perceptions”6 lead to his far-fetched conclusion that Native American music contains a “noble religious feeling [akin to] the central idea of Christianity.”7 Contrary to popular ideas of the time, he does advocate for Native American music as being “worthy of comparison to some of the best [music] we possess ourselves,”8 but only after his unwelcome imposition of Western notation to create versions of Native American music that “the Indians couldn’t have produced unaided.”9

Though much of ethnomusicology has changed over the course of its existence, some things remain the same, both positive and negative. Browner notes that the employment of fieldwork as the main method of ethnomusicological research has remained the same throughout history.10 Similarly, although the field has advanced greatly over time, the misrepresentation demonstrated through Fillmore’s article and research methods remains something to be aware of within ethnomusicology today.

Bibliography

1 https://library.artstor.org/asset/NMNH_125725565.

2 John Comfort Fillmore. “A STUDY OF INDIAN MUSIC.1.” Century Illustrated Magazine (1881-1906), 02, 1894, 616, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/study-indian-music-1/docview/125524446/se-2.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Diamond, Beverly. Music and modernity among First Peoples of North America. Edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine and Dylan Robinson. Wesleyan University Press, 2019.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Music of the First Nations : Tradition and Innovation in Native North America. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Accessed September 18, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.