Reconceptualizing Native American Boarding School Material Culture

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Critical Issues in Contemporary Archaeology & Historical Archaeology: Limits, Opportunities, Challenges", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

According to the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report (2022), between 1819 and 1969, 408 federal Native American boarding schools operated in 37 states. Considering the extensive spatial and temporal scale of these institutions, the amount of archived material culture associated with the schools is disproportionately small. Why? I will explore this question through a case study of an under-archived type of material culture: early 20th century postcards (posted and unposted) featuring images of Native American boarding schools.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Critical Issues in Contemporary Archaeology & Historical Archaeology: Limits, Opportunities, Challenges   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow