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Culture helps identify who you are. In 1901, the U.S government put together a boarding school called Ignacio Colorado on the Ute reservation. It was a boarding school which served Ute, Apache, and Navajo children. The school consists of three buildings, a girls’ dormitory, the main school/gym and a lunch hall which the Utes called tekahan which means place to eat. The boarding school’s purpose was to take the “savage” out of the child and make them a “normal person.” The school would not allow the students to leave with the intent to remove them from their people and culture their so-called savage ways. Anything that they could do to strip them of their dignity and beliefs was done. Their hair was cut, they were put in uniforms and were forbidden to speak their native language. The natives call it a cultural ethnocide. But since the natives were raised one way for thousands of years, it was very hard to break. in fact, it was close to impossible. I n the 40s the school softened up a little bit and let the students speak their native language.