Divided Lands, Calculated Erasures: Indian Boarding School Mathematics as a Tool of Settler Colonialism

• In Event: Examining the Politics of Curriculum and its Influence

Abstract

This paper provides critical historical context for mathematics taught in Indian boarding schools at the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing from the Estelle Reel Papers collection, we analyze arithmetic word problems related to Land and land use to demonstrate how they were developed to serve settler colonial objectives. Our analysis revealed that the word problems 1) were designed to displace Native students from the Land and 2) promoted individualism by normalizing concepts of private property, land ownership, and human control over nature—ideologies central to federal initiatives such as the Dawes Act. These findings illustrate how mathematics instruction functioned as a tool of settler colonialism, reshaping Native students’ understandings of and relationships to the natural world.

Authors

• Mary Smith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• José Francisco Gutiérrez, University of Utah

• Cynthia Benally, University of Utah