Overlapping and Underexplored Histories: The Convergence of Settler Colonial and Carceral Infrastructures

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Boarding And Residential Schools: Healing, Survivance And Indigenous Persistence", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

While a growing body of work has focused on the convergence of Native American histories with Japanese American incarceration, there are still many facets of these relationships that remain underexplored. This paper focuses on the Gila River Incarceration Camp, located on the land of the Gila River Indian Community a reservation of Akimel O’otham and Pee Posh peoples. There is still much to be understood about the entanglements between the camp and the Gila River Indian Community’s infrastructure as well as the legacies of the camp’s remains. For instance, the Sacaton Indian School was initially taken over by the War Relocation Authority as a base of operations during the early days of the camp’s operation. This expands the footprint of the camp’s impact and our understanding of how certain infrastructures intended for state application on native populations was repurposed towards the incarceration of Japanese Americans and requires sustained collaborative projects.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Boarding And Residential Schools: Healing, Survivance And Indigenous Persistence   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow