Pauline Harrington Blum (Potawatomi)

When the Indian Mission schools first opened nearly a century ago, Indian boys needed English names because their given names were difficult for the teachers to pronounce. Prohibited too was the use of their own language which, at home, young Indian children had learned from elders who regaled them for hours with stories that formed the background of the oral Indian history. These rigidities lingered even into our own time as many Indians found themselves in Indian schools with names like Chilocco, Haskell, and Carlisle.

One was Pauline Harrington Blum who, with her two sisters, attended Chilocco Indian School in Northern Oklahoma in the 1920's. "I could write a book about my experiences there," she says now. The school she attended was run like an army post: uniforms were worn all year, students were marched to class and back again, and older students were designated as sergeants to help disclipine the younger ones.

One of her goals now as a member of the Board of Trustees is to be sure that her community is responsive to young Indian's needs, helping them to live in both cultural worlds. "It's important to us that our youth can pridefully live in both cultural worlds, and to know that he can learn the anglo culture without relinquishing his own."