These Native American girls were taking a sewing class at the Cushman Indian School on the Puyallup Reservation in June of 1918. The goal of Native American education from 1880-1920 was to assimilate the children into the dominant European culture, removing them from traditional Indian ways. One method was to remove them from their families and enroll them in government run boarding schools. By 1910, the Puyallup Indian School had become the Cushman Indian School, a large industrial boarding school, hosting over 350 students from the Northwest and Alaska. The school's focus was training the students for a place as a laborer in an industrialized America. During WWI the Red Cross entered into a partnership with schools to produce needed goods for the war torn countries. The girls in this photograph are probably sewing for the Red Cross. The boarding school closed in 1920. G39.1-163; TPL-2822
<bdi><a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21714431" class="extiw" title="d:Q21714431"><span title="American photographer">Marvin Dement Boland</span></a>
</bdi>
10 June 1918<div style="display: none;">date QS:P571,+1918-06-10T00:00:00Z/11</div>
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