How Close is To Close?

After reading the article "Rhetorical Sovereignty: What do American Indians Want From Writing?" by Scott Lyons.  I found a few things in this article interesting.  I know that I commented about this in class, but what first had me hooked into this article and pushed me to keep reading was how the article started.  Lyons mentions the book My People the Sioux.  Lyons talks about Luther Standing Bear and more specifically when he and other (I'm guessing) Sioux children were taken to the Carlisle Indian School.  I was literally appalled when I heard what these children, who were probably no more that ten or eleven years old were forced to do.  They were forced not only out of the land they were in, not only away from their parents, but not importantly they were forced out of their culture.  They were forced into having new, more "American" names.  These children had to pick out their "new" names from a chalkboard, yet they did not even understand what was on the board, or how to say their new names.  I heard once that people argue that someone's name is their identity.  Their name is who they are.  These children's original names were taken away from them, and they were forced into getting new, "better" names.  They had no idea what their new names meant or even what they really were.  Ergo, one could argue that these children did not even know who they were anymore.  So, not only was everything else taken away from them when they entered this school, now their own selves were taken away as well.

I think that this whole situation is not only demoralizing, it is dehumanizing.  Just look at things from your perspective.  How would you feel if you were taken away from your home.  You were taken away from your family, your pets, your possessions, everything, and were forced to go to this new place that would "better" you.  And then when you do get to said place, they tell you that your name isn't good enough, and make you pick out a new name that you don't even understand what it means, how to say it, or why you even have to pick a new name.  To me, it is just so unbelievably disgusting to think that somewhere that is literally twenty minutes away from where I grew up, from where I live when I'm not at school, did these things.  It really does hit home when I think about how close these things occurred to where I live.