Habeas Corpus and American Indian Boarding Schools: Indigenous Self-Determination in Body and Mind, 1880–1900.

This article focuses on the history of Native peoples’ use of habeas corpus petitions to resist family separation imposed by the U.S. Indian boarding school system between 1885 and 1900. It analyzes three key cases from Alaska, New Mexico, and Iowa, where Native parents and relatives legally challenged federal agents and school officials to secure the release of their children, asserting Indigenous values of education and parental authority against federal legal paternalism. These cases reveal how Native petitioners strategically employed U.S. law to contest boarding school discipline and custody, thereby advancing self-determination in education despite the broader context of settler colonial control. While habeas corpus offered a means of resistance and community-based opposition to boarding schools, the article also notes that such legal actions simultaneously reinforced federal plenary power over Native lives.