The 1887 Dawes Act gave Congress the power to survey Indian reservations, assign allotments to individual Indians, and open the remaining land to homesteaders. Although tribal leaders including Chief Charlo and Sam Resurrection resisted allotment of the Flathead Reservation, the U.S. government opened the 1.2 million acre reservation to homesteading in 1910. Within a year, the Montana School Board established Big Arm School District #65. For a brief period, white and Indian children attended separate schools, but in the mid-1910s the community built Big Arm School, which served all area students. The gable-roofed, clapboard-sided building followed best practices for small school design, with two cloakrooms near the entry, a single band of windows on the north wall because health professionals believed cross-lighting harmed pupils’ eyes, and two outhouses set apart for boys and girls. At lunch, students heated jars of soup from home on the wood stove before playing softball, red rover, or kick-the-can. Increased teachers’ salaries and better roads led to students being transported to Polson and to the school’s closure in 1952. The building remained important as a community dance hall, polling place, and club room long after the school district officially abandoned it. In 2008, after it had been boarded up for almost a decade, the Big Arm Association began restoration work to preserve the building, and in 2011 it again became the center of the Big Arm community.