Mission to Survive: Catholic Education, Childhood, and Community on the Grand Ronde Reservation

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

One of the treaty rights guaranteed by the United States government to the more than two dozen Tribes and Bands that were removed to Grande Ronde, Oregon, in the nineteenth century was a formal education. Over the years, that education has taken many forms as children from Grand Ronde have attended several different schools, both on and off the Reservation. These included Chemawa Indian Boarding School, the Government-run Agency school, and multiple iterations of a Catholic school. This presentation will address new and ongoing research on the schooling that took place at St Michael’s Parish from the 1860s through the early twentieth century. Remote sensing and geophysical survey have revealed new information about the different structures that were part of the early Catholic community and historical Reservation landscape. These are complemented by archival documents, which illuminate the perspectives of some of the first priests and nuns who came to Grand Ronde. Together with oral histories and community members’ stories, these sources offer a fuller understanding of the history and legacy of education at Grand Ronde.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26271