Our Spirits Don't Speak English

Our Spirits Don't Speak English (2008) is a documentary film about the Native American boarding schools, which youths attended chiefly from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. It was filmed by the Rich Heape company and directed by Chip Richie. Native American storyteller Gayle Ross narrated the film. Ross is a descendant of John Ross, chief of the Cherokee Nation in the Trail of Tears period.^[1]

The film deals with both the schools run by Christian missionaries and those run by the United States' Bureau of Indian Affairs. It addresses the schools' role of forcing cultural assimilation of the resident children into the ways of the majority culture of European Americans.^[2]

See also

• Where the Spirit Lives, a 1989 Canadian dramatic film about the Canadian Indian residential school system
• Sleeping Children Awake, a 1992 Canadian documentary about residential schools
• We Were Children, a 2012 Canadian documentary about residential schools

External links

• Our Spirits Don't Speak English at the Internet Movie Database

Notes