A Day in the Life: Artifacts from Pipestone Indian Boarding School, Pipestone, Minnesota

Summary

Agency as reflected in the archeological record is a well-studied and disputed theme among archeologists.  Broad generalizations arise from these conversations resulting in an over-simplification of the conditions under which the record was created.  It is easy to paint the narrative that emerges in black and white terms.  Life in the United States was rarely that simple during the Indian boarding school area.  Oral histories show that employees and students alike had mixed feelings about their schools. Practices which appear deplorable by today’s standards often arose out of necessity; and the original purpose, to strip students of their culture, fell by the wayside as administrators labored to keep schools running. This paper examines artifacts collected from the Pipestone Indian Boarding School and, aided by oral histories and school records, attempts to understand life at the school within the context of the larger political and economic climate of the day.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology of Education: From Pedagogy to Practice   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 185