- Indigenous people,
- Social justice,
- Colonialism,
- Indians of North America -- Cultural assimilation,
- Indians of North America -- Education
The Meriam Report is a remarkable historical artifact of the United States' colonial project. The idea of a stronger nation through education embodied in the report betrays the report's imperial core. The report's authors express moral outrage at the failure of the United States to respect the human dignity of Native Americans. To absolve these failures, the report repeatedly looks to education as the way forward. My interest is in the discursive construction of that argument, specifically how new discourses of progress, scientific management, and modern administrative principles were used to justify expansion of the federal government and solidify the moral mission of the nation. I show how the language and discursive practices of the report extend a relationship of benevolent domination over the nation's Indigenous population.
Educational Abundance is an open access eJournal published by the New York State Foundations of Education Association, Rochester, NY.