Chemawa Indian School footage, 1968

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Silent footage depicting social life and vocational training at the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon. This film includes scenes of the school grounds, food being served in the cafeteria, and students socializing at the Chemawa Store. It also depicts the types of training offered to the male students at the school, including electrical work, plowing fields, clearing stumps from harvested forestlands, tractor maintenance, tree pruning, greenhouse gardening, livestock tending, cow milking and milk processing.

The Chemawa Indian School was founded in 1880 as the Forest Grove Indian School before moving to Salem in 1885 and changing its name. A detailed history of the Forest Grove Indian School has been compiled by the Pacific University Archives. Quoting from that resource,

"The school was part of a broad system of forced assimilation and cultural loss. Native Students who were taken to federal boarding schools were not allowed to practice their cultures or speak their own languages, and were often separated from their families for 3-10 years or longer. Boarding schools caused multi-generational trauma to many Native families."

This footage has been digitized from a film original held in the Extension and Experiment Station Communications Moving Images (FV120:299b), Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Oregon State University Libraries.

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