The Burns Day School: Government Intervention and Northern Paiute Sovereignty

Abstract

In 1887, a group of Northern Paiutes from the Wada-Tika band returned to Burns, Oregon following years of genocidal wars, imprisonment, and the loss of the Malheur Reservation. The dissolution of the Malheur Reservation caused the government to consider the Burns Paiutes “landless,” and therefore ineligible for federal assistance. However, in the early 1920s at the behest of the Burns Paiute community, Catholic priest Peter Heuel began to petition the government for greater assistance to the community. After many years of the government sending Burns Paiute children to schools hundreds of miles away, Burns Paiute families pushed for an educational option close to home. After the Burns School Board refused to enroll Burns Paiute children in the public school, a temporary day school for Burns Paiute children was proposed and eventually opened in 1928.