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PHOENIX, Ariz. -- A ground-breaking exhibition exploring the deep and lasting impact of boarding schools on Native Americans opened at the Heard Museum on November 18, 2000.
Remembering Our Indian School Days: The Boarding School Experience draws on first person recollections, memorabilia and the writings and art of four generations of Indian School alumni to examine the commonality of the boarding school experience. A powerful display that explores an important era in American history, this exhibition is the first of its kind and incorporates a variety of multidisciplinary elements to immerse visitors in the story being told by the people who lived it.
"The boarding school experience is crucial to understanding Native America today," says Margaret Archuleta, Pueblo/Hispanic, curator of the Heard Museum exhibit Remembering Our Indian School Days: The Boarding School Experience. "This exhibit allows visitors -- both Native and non-Native -- the opportunity to understand the collective history of Indian boarding schools, and to understand how that history has influenced contemporary Native American life."
Remembering Our Indian School Days is unique because it is the first exhibition to explore the role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) with relation to education. A multisensory experience that incorporates voices, music, tactile elements and visual images along with textual information, the exhibit engages visitors by presenting the common experience of education in the uncommon setting of the boarding school and blurs the distinction between Indian and non-Indian.
Remembering Our Indian School Days celebrates the spirit of survival. Originally established to "civilize" Native Americans into main-stream society, Indian boarding schools became a shaping force of a national...