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= Pierre Indian School = The Pierre Indian School was a school that was created in 1891 in Pierre, South Dakota. This school followed the general guidelines of other Indian schools, where the ultimate goal was to take away their Indian culture and substitute it with white American culture. However, the school itself was much closer to the reservations then most other Indian Schools, like Carlisle Indian Industrial School that was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania which was several hundreds away from any Indian reservations. Pierre originally was in close proximity to the Great Sioux Nation Reservation, but it lived in a hostile area where the public and the reservation residents were in constant social conflict for a few decades after the school was created.

Indian Schools
Indian Schools are able to be found all across the U.S., most however are in the great plains, just like Pierre Indian School. The statement 'kill the Indian, save the man' came from Col. Richard H. Pratt who created the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. A large portion of the kids who went to the Indian School succumbed to death either due to disease or extreme depression. The children were forced to be submerged into a culture they did not know, and speak a language that many of them had never heard before. While the kids were learning English they were also learning trade skills that the white teachers thought would be appropriate skills for the students to take back to their reservations. Some of these trades for the boys were farming, carpentry, and blacksmithing. The girls were taught different traits like sewing, quilting, and/or how to be a good maid. These different skill sets were a part of the school's curriculum for they were thought to be tools the students could use to improve their reservations.

Student Body
There have been thousands of students from multiple different tribes, who ended up going to Pierre Indian School. The children usually came from fifteen different tribes from North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska. There are two reservations that are a few miles away from the school itself. These reservations were called Lower Brule Indian Reservation and Crow Creek Indian Reservation. Lower Brule Indian Reservation is a Sicangu band and Crow Creek Indian Reservation are Mdewakanton and Ihanktonwan. They were originally part of the Great Sioux Nation that was given territory in most of the western part of the state of South Dakota along with parts of Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming, and North Dakota. The once Great Nations were now separated into multiple different reservations across several states that was a part of their historical territory. All of the reservations in these states, except the reservations in Montana and Wyoming, had students attend the Pierre Indian School which actually still exists today.

The Current School
The school is still functioning to this day, in the same building that was originally built for the students in 1891. It is also still a boarding school for Native American students. Many of the other Indian Schools no longer maintain the boarding part of the school, but Pierre is one of the few Indian school that it is currently still offering boarding accommodations. The school also has many sports opportunities for the kids, and they compete against other schools nearby in sporting events. The school currently houses students from the first grade to the eighth grade and teaches a curriculum to students that is more academically based, instead of focusing on career education like the original school's curriculum had focused on. Currently the curriculum the school teaches is regulated by the Bureau of Indian Education.