Pipestone: My Life in an Indian Boarding School

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· Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Kaipo Schwab
Audiobook
6 hr 46 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook

Best known as a leader of the Indian takeover of Alcatraz Island in 1969, Adam Fortunate Eagle now offers an unforgettable memoir of his years as a young student at Pipestone Indian Boarding School in Minnesota. In this rare firsthand account, Fortunate Eagle lives up to his reputation as a "contrary warrior" by disproving the popular view of Indian boarding schools as bleak and prisonlike. Fortunate Eagle attended Pipestone between 1935 and 1945, just as Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier's pluralist vision was reshaping the federal boarding school system to promote greater respect for Native cultures and traditions. But this book is hardly a dry history of the late boarding school era. Telling this story in the voice of his younger self, the author takes us on a delightful journey into his childhood and the inner world of the boarding school. Along the way, he shares anecdotes of dormitory culture, student pranks, and warrior games. Although Fortunate Eagle recognizes Pipestone's shortcomings, he describes his time there as nothing less than "a little bit of heaven." Were all Indian boarding schools the dispiriting places that history has suggested? This book allows listeners to decide for themselves.

About the author

Adam Fortunate Eagle is an Ojibwe artist, writer, and frequent guest lecturer. As an advocate for Native civil rights throughout his life, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the State University of New York, New Paltz. He is the author of Heart of the Rock and Pipestone.

Laurence M. Hauptman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History in the State University of New York, College at New Paltz, and the author of several books on the Iroquois in New York state.

Kaipo Schwab is an actor, director, and producer who has worked at the Roundabout, the Public Theater, Second Stage, Hartford Stage, and Cincinnati Playhouse. Kaipo's film and television credits include Anesthesia, The Royal Tenenbaums, Law & Order, Rescue Me, and Orange Is the New Black. He lives in New York City.

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