A History of the Indian Schools of Practical Nursing in the United States, 1935–1975

"A History of the Indian Schools of Practical Nursing in the United States, 1935-1975 is listed as a grant recipient by the American Association for the History of Nursing (AAHN). Grounded in the project title and its placement among AAHN awardees, the study proposes a historical examination of the Indian Schools of Practical Nursing operating in the United States across four decades, from 1935 to 1975. The research centers on institutional history during a period of major social, political, and professional transformation in American nursing and Native American affairs. By focusing on practical nursing schools specifically identified as "Indian" the project signals attention to educational institutions that served Indigenous communities or were identified with federal, tribal, or mission-based programs related to Native American populations. The timeframe spanning the late New Deal era, World War II and its aftermath, the civil rights movement, and the early years of federal Indian policy shifts in the 1960s and 1970, frames the study within contexts that likely shaped the formation, operation, curriculum, accreditation, and closure or transformation of such schools.

The project promises to trace how practical nursing education for Native American students was organized, delivered, and perceived within broader health, education, and federal policy frameworks. The work also positions these schools within professional nursing history by illuminating their relationship to licensing, standards for practical nursing, and the evolving role of practical nurses in U.S. healthcare delivery. Given the project's archival and historical orientation implied by its listing among AAHN research grants, the study will likely draw on institutional records, oral histories, governmental documents, and contemporary nursing publications to reconstruct institutional practices and student experiences. Through that approach, the research intends to fill gaps in the historiography of nursing education by foregrounding institutions that have received limited attention in mainstream accounts of nursing history.

This project contributes to multiple fields: the history of nursing and nursing education, Indigenous history in the United States, and the history of public health and social policy. It aims to illuminate how practical nursing schools identified as "Indian" navigated the tensions between local community needs, professional nursing standards, and federal or mission-directed educational agendas. By documenting the existence, curriculum, enrollment, and professional outcomes associated with these schools across four decades, this study offers a focused case to examine structural inequalities, educational access, and the role of nurses and practical nurses in Indigenous healthcare during a critical portion of the twentieth century. Listed among AAHN's grant recipients, the project underscores professional recognition of the historical significance of these institutions and their potential to broaden understandings of nursing's past. Overall, the research promises a careful, historically grounded account of Indian Schools of Practical Nursing in the United States, 1935-1975, that situates these institutions within national trajectories of nursing education, Indigenous policy, and health care delivery.