The Theodore Roosevelt Boarding School: Ndee (Apache) Cultural Persistence and Survivance

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.

Indigenous boarding school experiences in North America are dynamic and diverse, ranging from traumatic and isolating to adventurous and amplifying. Recent partnerships and collaborations between Indigenous communities and researchers are providing new insights into the complex histories of boarding school life. During an oral history project conducted with the White Mountain Apache Tribe about the Theodore Roosevelt Boarding School, we found that many living Ndee elders value the preservation of their experiences, and recognize the loss of irreplaceable knowledge that left the community when the first generation of Ndee attendees of the school passed on. The stories recorded during this project highlight the imprints left on individuals in boarding school that continue to contribute to ongoing Ndee identity and cultural survivance. In collaboration with the tribe, we hope to describe some of the powerful ways Ndee youth structured their educational experiences through intentional cultural persistence, resistance, and survivance.

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