Bookworm #97 – Author Conversation with Anne Ruggles Gere, “Agents of Survivance: Indigenous Women Teachers in the Boarding School Era”

In her book, Agents of Survivance: Indigenous Women Teachers in the Boarding School Era, Anne Ruggles Gere complicates and enriches established accounts of the Indian boarding school era and what preceded it by looking closely at the largely ignored Indigenous women teachers in these schools.

Focusing on Sarah Winnemucca, S. Alice Callahan, Angel DeCora, and Ella Deloria, Gere shows how these and many other Indian women teachers subversively resisted assimilation with tribal presence, relationality, connection to land, rejection of victimhood, and maintenance of cultural traditions, art, and languages. Their vulnerable positions in schools directed by Euro-Americans necessitated that their contributions be subversive, nearly invisible. Despite this, they developed policies and practices that were passed to Indian students who in turn became teachers of the next generation of Indian students, and many of their innovations inform contemporary movements toward sovereignty for Indian education.