Journal of Universalist History
Volume XLI (2017-2018)
Special Issue: 2016 Convocation of Unitarian Universalist Studies
Editor: Kathleen R. Parker
2018, Unitarian Universalist History and Heritage Center
The Montana Industrial school for Indians at Romona Ranch, 1886-1897
by Dana Capasso Stivers, pgs. 38 – 65
Dana Capasso Stivers has, so far to date, offered up one of the more accurate versions of the American Unitarian Association and it’s role in the Indian boarding school tragedy, specifically with the Montana Industrial School for Indians, better known as the Bond Mission School. Many of the other, more recent writings on the Bond Mission School skirted around and glossed over a number of issues and attitudes of our predecessors and their participation in aiming “to assimilate the Crow people into Anglo-Saxon society and to dismantle their culture through various forms of symbolic violence.”
Thank you for sharing this detailed historical context. It’s important to acknowledge the full truth of the Unitarian involvement in the boarding school era, including the harm caused through forced assimilation and cultural suppression.
I appreciate that this article does not gloss over those realities. Honest reflection like this is necessary for meaningful truth and reconciliation, especially with the Crow people and other Indigenous communities who continue to live with the impacts today.