Colonized Through Math: Native Erasure and Land Dispossession in Settler Colonial US Boarding School Curricula

• In Event: Unforgetting Settler Colonial Histories of Science and Mathematics Education

Abstract

Objectives
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the US created a system of settler colonial boarding schools specifically targeting American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children as part of a federal policy of forced cultural assimilation that coincided with the dispossession of Native land (Newland, 2022). Historical scholarship shows how settler schooling was widely regarded as an effective way to assimilate Indigenous Peoples into Anglo-American ways of life, thereby eliminating their reliance on Tribal governance and sovereignty over their lands (Adams, 1988, 2020; Child, 1998; Hoxie, 2001; Trennert, 1988). This archival study examines how mathematics curricula in these schools promoted settler colonial ideologies and assimilationist ideals to advance a settler nation-state.

Perspectives
This work is situated within the fields of Settler Colonial Studies (Holm, 2005; Sepulveda, 2024; Wolfe, 1999), Native American Education (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2025), and critical mathematics education scholarship (Gutiérrez, 2013; Valero & Zevenbergen, 2004). Our analysis of boarding school mathematical data focuses on math-as-colonization—a tool used for Native elimination, land dispossession, racialization processes, and white supremacist structures.

Modes of Inquiry
As an interdisciplinary research group, we used mixed methods to examine primary documents related to boarding school mathematics from 1879 to 1932. The period of our research is called the assimilation and allotment era in the history of American Indian policy, during which federal policies aimed at domestication, individualization, and tribal breakup through land allotments available to white settlers. This paper synthesizes findings from prior studies, interpreting several themes through the lens of settler colonial theory and math-as-colonization. The main question guiding this research is: How was mathematics instruction used to promote a settler colonial US nation-state?

Sources
We built an archive of mathematical datasets related to Indigenous boarding schools during our study period. This archive includes special collections, such as the Estelle Reel Papers and the Carlisle Indian School collection, repositories of digitized materials, including the Sherman Museum, and publicly available Courses of Study published by the Office of Indian Affairs.

Substantiated Conclusions
Mathematics significantly contributed to the advancement of settler colonial agendas, particularly in relation to the Dawes Act and land allotment. We found no evidence that Indigenous mathematical knowledge or educational systems were included in the curriculum; instead, the focus was on vocational mathematics rather than academic mathematics. Additionally, qualitative analysis revealed that arithmetic word problems were employed to “destroy to replace” Native economies, cultures, and kinship connections to land, people, and the more-than-human world. These math problems clearly illustrated the politically constructed divide between so-called civilization and Native peoples, as “white” math texts were deemed unsuitable for use in boarding schools.

Significance
Collectively, this work contributes to the literature on boarding schools and the history of mathematics education. Our findings offer insights into settler colonialism—how the US used schooling, including teaching mathematics, as part of a larger strategy to dispossess Native lands and continue cultural genocide. We show how the US settler colonial project is reflected in mathematics problems and standards, and we raise questions about counter-narratives to this colonial legacy.

Authors

• José Francisco Gutiérrez, University of Utah

• Charles Sepulveda, The University of Utah

• Cynthia Benally, University of Utah

• Kēhaulani Vaughn, University of California - Riverside

• Julie Sherman, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Mary Smith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign