Happy Indigenous Peoples Day! It is so wonderful for Indigenous people to have a day of recognition as human beings instead of uncivilized savages. My great grandmother was sent to Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding to learn English and become a Christianized person. She would be proud of Indigenous People Day. By the way, she was already Christianized Episcopalian and was very civilized, before she was forced to attend Carlisle. My Great-Great Grandmother, Elizabeth Huff, refused to be assimilated white. Thus, her daughters, Sophia and Lily were taken away from her and sent to Carlisle to be assimilated.
The book pictured below named: Stiya, A Carlisle Indian Girl At Home, was written by an author named Embe in 1891. Embe’s real name isn’t given. The real author is believed to be a white, female employee of the Carlisle Indian School. This book was printed at Riverside Press in Cambridge, Massachusettes, funded by the U.S. Army. A copy of this book was given to all graduates of the Carlisle Indian School. The graduates were to read this book to remind them to ‘not go back to the blanket’ (ie their Indian Culture and language). The book is propaganda and full of lies by the author. I thank God, Our Creator, that my great grandmother never received a copy of this book! I am thankful my Great Grandmother, Sophia Huff, kept her Oneida culture and language despite spending years away from her real family in Oneida Wisconsin. My book is still for sale at lulu.com and other book stores, so you can read the whole story that took me fifteen years of research to write. Thank you for reading this blog. Happy Indigenous Peoples Day to all Indigenous people in the world. Please feel free to share this with others if you wish. Sincerely, Roberta Capasso, Author of : Sky Woman Lives in Me. I am also a proud Indigenous Oneida from Wisconsin.
Sky Woman Lives in Me 