Native American Graduate of Mount Holyoke

Native American Graduate of Mount Holyoke College

Ruth Muskrat Bronson was not the first Native American woman to attend Mount Holyoke. There had been others even as early as 1846. But she was the first Native American to graduate.

Mount Holyoke Alumna Embraced Both Parts of Her Cultural Identity

She was born just before the end of the 19th century and spent her early years in a Cherokee community. Like many Native Americans of her time, she had been sent to a government boarding school. There she was taught to adopt the ways of the dominant culture. But she held onto her Native heritage as well.

After graduating from high school, she took a job with the YWCA on an Apache reservation. She attended classes at nearby universities and, “lectured around the country about Native American affairs,” according to Erin Binney’s article in the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly, Winter 2018.

She was outspoken on the importance of preserving and respecting the Native American culture. In 1922 she represented Native Americans at the World’s Student Christian Federation Conference in China. In 1923 she was given a full scholarship and enrolled as a junior at Mount Holyoke.

According to the article, “she loved meeting informally with her teachers in the evenings to enjoy a cup of tea and good conversation.” She wrote that this experience was new for her and opened up “a world of joy.”

Her English professor, Miss Snell, encouraged her to embrace her Native American identity. In December of 1923 Ruth was invited to the White House “as part of the Committee of One Hundred, a group designed to advise on Native American policy,” representing Native American students.

Ruth Muskrat’s Speech to President Coolidge, December 13, 1923

Bronson’s Professional Life

After graduating from Mount Holyoke in 1925 she taught at the largest Native American boarding school in the country. She encouraged students to have pride in their culture and in themselves.

Later she worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. “During her tenure, she helped send more than two thousand Native Americans to college,” the writer says.

She believed in the importance of a multicultural worldview. She taught that women could become leaders not in spite of, but because of, their backgrounds.

I loved the final sentence of the article: “As Bronson noted in her book Indians Are People, Too, ‘Under the right kind of circumstances this blending [of two cultures] can build for the individual a more satisfying life and for the world a richer personality than any one culture could produce.’ ”

You can read the full article from the Alumnae Quarterly.

Connection Between Native American Graduate and Osage Murders? 

I was fascinated by this story. I’m now deep into reading Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann.

This is the true story of deaths that took place in the 1920’s in Oklahoma. I imagine that Ruth Muskrat Bronson knew about the murders. I may write to the author and ask if he knows of any connection.

Winning Photography of Boko Haram Victims

In Sunday’s New York Times was the announcement of the award-winning photography.

Adam Ferguson, of The New York Times, was named Photographer of the Year. His prize-winning entry included the series of pictures he took of girls who had been recruited as suicide bombers by Boko Haram. I remember seeing them when they were first published.

Other photographers at The Times were also winners.

If you click on the photo here you can see the others in Ferguson’s series from Nigeria.

Michele McNally is the director of photography at The Times. She said, “This group of winners is deeply committed to telling historically significant and consequential stories, visually. Their photographs force you to look and really see. They are compassionate. You can’t turn away.”

She is right. I looked briefly at other photos but my main interest was in the photos of the girls who had been captured by Boko Haram. They are compelling. They make the viewer, or at least made me, wonder how the girls managed to have so much courage.

School Attacks and How to Defend

With attacks on schools becoming far too frequent in this country and in Nigeria, there is much discussion on how to defend against them.

A report in US New and World Report says that the Nigerian government has ordered security forces, “to defend all schools in ‘liberated areas’ of the country’s northeast to avoid further mass abductions . . . by Boko Haram extremists.”

The announcement came from the Nigerian President’s office last week after the abduction of more than 100 girls from a boarding school in Dapchi, not far from the border with Niger. The police and civil defense are being asked to “coordinate with the military and the governors of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states to ‘ensure deployment of personnel to all schools.’ ”

Somehow this makes me think of the fox being asked to guard the hen-house. Or am I being too cynical when I question the upright nature of Nigeria’s military, police, and civil defense? I hope so!

Of course the best solution is to defeat Boko Haram, as the government has said it has already done! And then to ensure employment opportunities for the young men with nothing to do, who are unwilling to turn to farming, and may not have land to farm even if they wanted to. So difficult and so essential.