Santa Fe Film Festival 2008

'Our Spirits Don't Speak English: Indian Boarding School' examines a boarding school system designed to destroy Indian culture and tribal unity over 100 years.Begun in 1879 as an attempt to integrate indigenous peoples into western society, the schools' mission, according to Captain Richard Henry Pratt, superintendent of Carlisle Indian Industrial School was to 'kill the Indian and save the man.' Uprooted from their homes, hundreds of students died, but many survived to change the system and gain fame. Among them, Jim Thorpe, honored at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics as 'greatest athlete in the world.' This is the last interview with Thorpe's daughter Grace before she passed away in, 2008.According to executive producer Steven R. Heape, an oral history shared by Andrew Windy Boy (Chippewa/Cree) inspired the film and its title. Windy Boy emotionally relates the assault on his culture in the late 1960's and early 1970's. 'I wasn't allowed to talk my native tongue or practice my native ways. I didn't know any other language, so... Cree would come out. And whenever I'd talk, I'd get hit.' We learn how the boy knew the abasement but not the meaning of the dunce cap he was forced to wear. Gayle Ross, renowned Cherokee storyteller and great granddaughter of Chief John Ross, narrates .