Pipestone

Gr 9 Up—Adam Fortunate Eagle entered the Pipestone Indian Training School at the age of six. From that time until his graduation at age 16, he spent each school year and many summers under the care of the teachers and wardens at Pipestone. Growing up with other children, some sent by their families and others enrolled as orphans, Fortunate Eagle experienced the loneliness of separation, the camaraderie of school life, and the absence of his culture. While traditional practices were not forbidden, neither were they taught. Piecing together his heritage through hunting excursions, visits to nearby Native families, summer trips home, and the thoughts and ideas of his schoolmates, Fortunate Eagle eventually matured into a proud, resourceful, well-educated young man. This journey, told through his spare narrative, is filled with school pranks, tender memories, and a growing sense of the world at large between 1935 and 1945. While his account does not follow the general bias against this boarding-school system, the author acknowledges its shortcomings. Brief language and bare, honest descriptions of adolescence add strength and truth to the story, making Pipestone well suited to high school readers. Fortunate Eagle's memories of his time in an Indian boarding school fill a vital need in the canon of available literature about the American Indian experience.—Sara Saxton, Tuzzy Consortium Library, Barrow, AK