http://www.nyfa.org/level3.asp?id=332&fid=6&sid=17
For A Walk to Remember, the current exhibition at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, several Los Angeles artists will lead walking tours through neighborhoods they “have a particular relationship or affinity for and that deal specifically with the rich cultural history of Los Angeles.” Here, artist Meg Cranston describes the inspiration for her walk. Cranston will focus on the Native American population in the Bunker Hill neighborhood and the Sherman Indian High School in Riverside.
The history of the Native American in the United States is a history of relocation. One of the places tribes have been moved to and from is Los Angeles. In the ’50s, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs initiated a relocation program to move Navajos from their reservations to one of three cities: Denver, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. Later, the Indian Bureau extended the program to encompass all tribes.
In Los Angeles, one of the neighborhoods where relocated Natives clustered was Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and the Disney Music Hall currently stand. My walk begins in Bunker Hill and ends with a trip to a pow wow at the Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, where I’ll lead a lecture and discussion about the Sherman Indian High School and the history of the urban pow wow and pow wow etiquette. I chose to begin my walk in Bunker Hill because a friend’s father once told me that when he was a boy, in the ’50s, Navajos lived in apartments on Bunker Hill. The dissonance between the stereotype of Native American living in the wilderness and the reality of them living in small Bunker Hill apartments has always stayed with me.
In my research at the Los Angeles Public Library on the Native American community in Bunker Hill, I was lead to their collection of photographs that document the history of the Sherman Indian High School in Riverside. In the ’50s, the US government’s Indian Relocation Program routinely sent Native Americans from reservations (Navajo, typically) to Los Angeles to find employment. Those deemed ill-prepared for 20th-century life were sent to what was then called the Sherman Institute for reeducation. One of the few surviving records of that history is Kent MacKenzie’s 1961 documentary film The Exiles. Images from that film also appear in Thom Andersens’ 2003 film Los Angeles Plays Itself.
Built in 1901, the Sherman Institute was originally a hospital. It later became a boarding school for Native students. Like all Native boarding schools, Sherman was designed to reeducate Natives for the purpose of integrating them into white society. Native customs were suppressed, their languages were forbidden, and tribal unity was discouraged. Members of the same tribe were forbidden to share a room. Men and women were segregated. The Sherman School stressed education in the industrial and service trades (machinery, carpentry, painting, wood working, sewing, baking) and had remarkable facilities, which are documented in a photographic history that exists at the school and in the Los Angeles Library’s photo collection.
In the ’50s, a period generously documented by the photo record, the Sherman School looked like any generic American high school, complete with cheerleaders, football teams, and proms. By the photos, one may guess that the transformation of students from tribal-affiliated reservation dwellers into urban, pan-cultural Native Americans was complete.
During this decade, the US government was seeking ways to terminate its support of Native tribes by creating “opportunities” that would assimilate them into urban society. As an experiment, Navajos were frequently sent to Los Angeles and other cities to alleviate unemployment on reservations. Those judged unfit to function in industrialized urban society were sent to the Sherman school for reeducation, where they were drilled in the basics of modern western living, such as how to tell time. The hope was that after a year or two they would find work in Los Angeles’ burgeoning post-war economy.
In the ’60s, Sherman came under the scrutiny of the developing Native American activist movement, resulting in a US Senate Investigation Committee. The committee granted some control of the school to the Indian Educational Association, and the Sherman Institute became Sherman Indian High School, a Native American school run (at least partly) by Native Americans.
Today, the Sherman School is one of three remaining Native boarding schools in the US. It’s a multi-tribal high school operated by the Intertribal Council and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Half of its students speak tribal languages. Los Angeles County has the largest Native population in the United States. Tribal culture has thrived in the city but until very recently, it had been largely invisible to the wider population, and its recent visibility derives from controversy. Native-operated casinos are currently changing the socio-economic potential for California’s Native population. A 2004 ballot measure in LA attempted to tax Native casinos, despite their location on tribal lands and the tribes’ status as sovereign nations. The gaming is very profitable, and California's Native population has the potential to climb from dire poverty to relative prosperity in less than a generation. Still, as has been the case for decades, this will only manifest after yet another prolonged struggle with a governmental institution.
Meg Cranston’s walks will take place on April 15 and 16.
For more information on Meg Cranston and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions’ A Walk to Remember, visit:
http://www.artleak.org/AWalkToRemember.html
http://www.uniteddivas.com/megbio.html