
About the Center
The Center for the Futures of Native Peoples at Dickinson College is an initiative dedicated to advancing the understanding and appreciation of the Indigenous boarding school experience, promoting the study of North American Indigeneity, and fostering a robust national conversation on the past, present, and future of Native American issues. Our Center is uniquely positioned to lead in this endeavor, given Dickinson College's intimate and complicated history with the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (CIIS), a major site of memory for Native Americans located near our campus.
The CIIS, operating from 1879 to 1918, enrolled 7,800 students from across the United States, including Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico, with the aim of assimilating and "civilizing" Indian children. As the flagship and model for all other off-reservation boarding schools across the US and Canada, the CIIS represented a tool of cultural violence intended to erase Indigenous futures and secure a singular, racially assimilated American nation.
Our Center acknowledges the profound moral failing of Dickinson College's historical relationship with the CIIS, a relationship that included support for the school's activities and collaboration with its mission. We recognize the pernicious damage done by the CIIS to Indigenous peoples and their nations, and we are committed to reconciling with this history and facilitating opportunities to discuss the future of Native peoples—the very thing the CIIS and other federal boarding schools were designed to erase.
The CFNP is made possible by the generous support of the Mellon Foundation.