It served grades 1-8, teaching both academic and practical subjects, intended to give children skills needed for their rural societies.

Officially, the BIA leased the land for fees that were supposed to be returned to the tribe and held in trust or paid to heads of households.

[6][10] Children from the tribes ages five to fifteen were required to attend the school at Lac du Flambeau, essentially encompassing grades 1-8.

At the boarding school, the children were forced to abandon their Ojibwe or other Native American languages, ceremonies, foods and clothing.

Given the rural nature of the area, these schools struggled to be self-sufficient, raising their own food like a family farm or village.

"[1] The academic curriculum was standard for the time: arithmetic, reading, spelling, ethics, civics, geography, drawing, history, written and oral language, physiology, current events, music and nature.

Boys learned farming and gardening, stock raising and dairying, carpentry and masonry, shoe and harness repair, engineering, blacksmithing, and painting.

This is a typical weekday schedule: On the weekends, children were given some time for recreation, but it was also a period of inspection of their living spaces, which were to be kept orderly.

In 1898 Charley Catfish of Lac du Flambeau sent this letter to the Indian agent at La Pointe: Mr Agent esq will pleas tell me if Mr. Parash has the power to go and take our children away frome us without our consient that is I mean frome thay mother or father one of my nabors has a child taken away frome him and the child was nursing yet we think he is too young to go to school the Boy is foor years old that is too young to go to school and the Boy is sick over it and of corse the mother and father is feeling very Bad over it pleas let us indins know if he has the power to take our children with out our own consient of corse you know I am not doing this on my own hook I am writing for the Balance of my friends addresscharley catfishlac du flambeau res Wis The agent answered that no child that young was in the school.

In nearly every boarding school one will find children of 10, 11, and 12 spending four hours a day in more or less heavy industrial work—dairy, kitchen work, laundry, shop.

If there were any real knowledge of how human beings are developed through their behavior, we should not have in the Indian boarding schools the mass movements from dormitory to dining room, from dining room to classroom, from classroom back again, all completely controlled by external authority...[5]In the 1920s Native crafts was added to the curriculum at Lac du Flambeau.

Within two generations, the boarding school had created a population of young adults who did not fit into either the traditional reservation culture or the surrounding white communities.

"[1] After passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act in 1975, the school was transferred to the Ojibwe people for their direct management and operation.

[1] In 2000 the Department of Interior formally apologized for actions of the BIA "that in the past has committed acts so terrible that they infect, diminish and destroy the lives of Indian people decades later, generations later."

The sign-board outside the school observes, "...the Boy's Dormitory... towering over the state highway, is a constant reminder of the near destruction of Native language and culture.