In 1879, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School opened in Pennsylvania as a flagship Native American boarding school. Its purpose was assimilation, separating Indigenous children from families, languages, clothing, ceremonies, and names. The institution became a symbol of cultural violence carried out through education.

The boarding school system left deep marks on Native American poetry and memoir. Later Indigenous poets wrote of language loss, forced silence, survival, and recovery, turning traumatic educational spaces into subjects of witness and cultural reclamation.