Remembering through Landscape: Decolonizing the narrative of a Federal Indian Boarding School

Summary

Since 2011, I have conducted community-based archaeology at the former Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School in collaboration with the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan and City of Mount Pleasant. Elsewhere I have presented theoretical analyses federal Indian boarding schools as total institutions that utilized landscape design in assimilationist goals.  In this paper, however, I will discuss the role of landscape as a component of analysis in community-based participatory research. I have observed how the landscape of the former Mount Pleasant boarding school contains many elements that facilitate remembering, both traumatic and nostalgic, by community members. Elements of the landscape, together with documentary evidence, artifacts, and oral histories, bring to life once silenced stories of boarding school children. Recognizing the importance of landscape facilitates decolonizing narratives and is essential for building an indigenous framework for research. I will discuss how stakeholders developed culturally-appropriate methods for identifying and recording these elements.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Native American Cultural Landscapes and Community Collaborations   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 895