- the Public Library
- LibGuides
- Subject Guides - 25/50/25
- Local History
- Boarding School History in New Mexico
Local History
Albuquerque Indian School
Albuquerque Indian School
Albuquerque Indian School Teachers, 1883
- Albuquerque Indian SchoolFrom the Historic Albuquerque Inc. website and written by Mo Palmer.
- Albuquerque Indian SchoolFrom Access Genealogy.
- Indian School GravesFrom "The Paper," July 27, 2021.
- Seven Generations of Red Power - Albuquerque Indian SchoolAn exhibition from the Albuquerque Museum.
- “We’re not as bad as we look”: Girls’ Education at the Albuquerque Indian SchoolFrom the National Archives, a blog post written by Jennifer Eltringham, an intern at the National Archives at Denver.
Helpful Websites
Continue Your Research
- Discovering and Researching Bureau of Indian Affairs School RecordsA presentation by Cody White from the National Archives on using Bureau of Indian Affairs school records for research.
- Indian Pueblo Cultural Center Library & ArchivesThe library preserves and documents the culture and history of the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico, as well as Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in El Paso, Texas. The library’s work serves to build Pueblo identity while securing a place for Pueblo people in the national historical narrative. The IPCC Library & Archives is a non-circulating, targeted collection for those who wish to know more about the lives, histories, traditions, and culture of Pueblo people.
- The Indigenous Digital Archive Presented by the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, New Mexico. The Indigenous Digital Archive is here to help you explore the history of US goverment Indian boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries.
- University of New Mexico: Native American Boarding Schools Research Guide A research guide compiled by the University of New Mexico Library, including items held in their collections.
News Sources
- Native America CallingNative America Calling is a live call-in program linking public radio stations, the Internet and listeners together in a thought-provoking national conversation about issues specific to Native communities.
- Navajo Times - Diné bi NaltsoosAlso available in the library catalog.
- Navajo Times HOLDINGS FOR SPECIAL COLLECTIONS LIBRARY: Paper: 1964-1993 (Bound) HOLDINGS FOR MAIN LIBRARY: Paper: 1 month (weekly); Note: current issue on rack; Microfilm: Nov. 1959-to date.Call Number: 979 Navajo
- Navajo Times [microform] Continues the publication of the same name issued Nov. 1959-Apr. 1960 in magazine format. Microfilm. El Paso, Tex. : Southwest Micropublishing. microfilm reels ; 35 mm.Call Number: 979 Navajo Library Use OnlyPublication Date: 1960-1987
- Newspaper Archive Library Edition - New Mexico This link opens in a new window
NewspaperARCHIVE Library Edition is an online database that provides searchable access to New Mexico newspapers. Every part of every page is searchable, including valuable local articles, advertisements, editorials, classified ads, and obituaries. The collection contains over 128 different newspapers from across New Mexico. The archives cover New Mexico history from 1847-2019 and allow you to further understand an ancestor's place within their local community to research your genealogy. Start your New Mexico ancestry search now and discover more about your ancestor's stories!
- PressReader This link opens in a new window
PressReader gives you unlimited access to thousands of magazines and newspapers from around the world. Read newspaper stories and magazine articles the minute they’re available on newsstands. Shift easily between the original page replica and a custom story layout optimized for mobile reading. Or, bring it all to life with listening mode, one-touch translation, and dynamic commenting.
History
The History of Boarding Schools in New Mexico
Albuquerque Indian School,1885
The discovery of unmarked graves at the site of Native American residential and boarding schools across the United States and Canada has renewed scrutiny of these institutions.
Founded with the intention of assimilating Native American children, students at these schools were separated from family, and forbidden from speaking Native languages, or practicing traditional customs. Education was often limited to training as domestic and industrial workers.
New Mexico was home to several boarding schools as well as day schools, though children from New Mexico were also sent to schools that were located out of state.
- Albuquerque Indian School
- Nenahnezad Boarding School
- Ramona Industrial School
- Rehoboth Boarding School
- San Juan Boarding School
- Santa Fe Industrial School (Santa Fe Indian School)
- Shiprock Boarding School
- Zuni Boarding School
For a discussion of the topic in New Mexico:
Let's Talk About the Legacy of New Mexico's Native American Boarding Schools - from KUNM.
Circulating collection
Books You Can Borrow
The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo by
A haunting dream that will not relent pulls author Kent Nerburn back into the hidden world of Native America, where dreams have meaning, animals are teachers, and the "old ones" still have powers beyond our understanding. In this moving narrative, we travel through the lands of the Lakota and the Ojibwe, where we encounter a strange little girl with an unnerving connection to the past, a forgotten asylum that history has tried to hide, and the complex, unforgettable characters wehave come to know fromNeither Wolf nor Dog andThe Wolf at Twilight. Part history, part mystery, part spiritual journey and teaching story,The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo is filled with the profound insight into humanity and Native American culture we have come to expect from Nerburn's journeys. As the American Indian College Fund has stated, once you have encountered Nerburn's stirring evocations of America's high plains and incisive insights into the human heart, "you can never look at the world, or at people, the same way again."
Call Number: 978.0049 Nerburn
The Wolf at Twilight by
A note is left on a car windshield, an old dog dies, and Kent Nerburn finds himself back on the Lakota reservation where he traveled more than a decade before with a tribal elder named Dan. The touching, funny, and haunting journey that ensues goes deep into reservation boarding-school mysteries, the dark confines of sweat lodges, and isolated Native homesteads far back in the Dakota hills in search of ghosts that have haunted Dan since childhood. In this fictionalized account of actual events, Nerburn brings the land of the northern High Plains alive and reveals the Native American way of teaching and learning with a depth that few outsiders have ever captured.
Call Number: 978.0049 Nerburn- One House, One Voice, One Heart byCall Number: 978.956 Hyer
Kill the Indian, Save the Man by
For five consecutive generations, from roughly 1880 to 1980, Native American children in the United States and Canada were forcibly taken from their families and relocated to residential schools. The stated goal of this government program was to "kill the Indian to save the man." Half of the children did not survive the experience, and those who did were left permanently scarred. The resulting alcoholism, suicide and the transmission of trauma to their own children has led to a social disintegration with results that can only be described as genocidal. "The Indian residential schools in both the US and Canada . . . include[d] the forced exile of children and the prohibition of the use of a national language or religion . . . Churchill presents a bleak yet utterly necessary history of a brutal system that was in effect until 1990."--Booklist "Painful and powerful,Kill the Indian, Save the Man provides the first comprehensive study of the effects of the residential schools into which American Indian children were forced by the U.S. and Canadian governments. With his usual painstaking accuracy and moving prose, Churchill exposes the genocidal nature of this important dimension of the assimilationist policies that continue to decimate Native North American communities. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the ravages of settler state colonialism or the effectsof transgenerational trauma."--Natsu Taylor Saito, Professor of Law, Georgia State University, and author ofWe Have Met the Enemy, American Exceptionalism andSubversion of the Rule of Law "The analysis and evidence deployed herein are both compelling and altogether consistent with what I've discovered in my own research and experience as a judge on a special tribunal assessing the effects of residential schooling on the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. I urge all people who oppose genocide--from whatever source, against whatever victims--to read this book."--Jim Craven (Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi), citizen of the Blackfoot Nation and Professor of Economics, Clark College Ward Churchill is the author ofA Little Matter of Genocide, among other books. He is currently a Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Education at the Edge of Empire by
For the vast majority of Native American students in federal Indian boarding schools at the turn of the twentieth century, the experience was nothing short of tragic. Dislocated from family and community, they were forced into an educational system that sought to erase their Indian identity as a means of acculturating them to white society. However, as historian John Gram reveals, some Indian communities on the edge of the American frontier had a much different experience--even influencing the type of education their children received. Shining a spotlight on Pueblo Indians' interactions with school officials at the Albuquerque and Santa Fe Indian Schools, Gram examines two rare cases of off-reservation schools that were situated near the communities whose children they sought to assimilate. Far from the federal government's reach and in competition with nearby Catholic schools for students, these Indian boarding school officials were in no position to make demands and instead were forced to pick their cultural battles with nearby Pueblo parents, who visited the schools regularly. As a result, Pueblo Indians were able to exercise their agency, influencing everything from classroom curriculum to school functions. As Gram reveals, they often mitigated the schools' assimilation efforts and assured the various pueblos' cultural, social, and economic survival. Greatly expanding our understanding of the Indian boarding school experience, Education at the Edge of Empire is grounded in previously overlooked archival material and student oral histories. The result is a groundbreaking examination that contributes to Native American, Western, and education histories, as well as to borderland and Southwest studies. It will appeal to anyone interested in knowing how some Native Americans were able to use the typically oppressive boarding school experience to their advantage.
Materials at Main Genealogy
- Albuquerque Indian School yearbook: Sandpainter For five consecutive generations, from roughly 1880 to 1980, Native American children in the United States and Canada were forcibly taken from their families and relocated to residential schools. The stated goal of this government program was to "kill the Indian to save the man." Half of the children did not survive the experience, and those who did were left permanently scarred. The resulting alcoholism, suicide and the transmission of trauma to their own children has led to a social disintegration with results that can only be described as genocidal. "The Indian residential schools in both the US and Canada . . . include[d] the forced exile of children and the prohibition of the use of a national language or religion . . . Churchill presents a bleak yet utterly necessary history of a brutal system that was in effect until 1990."--Booklist "Painful and powerful,Kill the Indian, Save the Man provides the first comprehensive study of the effects of the residential schools into which American Indian children were forced by the U.S. and Canadian governments. With his usual painstaking accuracy and moving prose, Churchill exposes the genocidal nature of this important dimension of the assimilationist policies that continue to decimate Native North American communities. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the ravages of settler state colonialism or the effectsof transgenerational trauma."--Natsu Taylor Saito, Professor of Law, Georgia State University, and author ofWe Have Met the Enemy, American Exceptionalism andSubversion of the Rule of Law "The analysis and evidence deployed herein are both compelling and altogether consistent with what I've discovered in my own research and experience as a judge on a special tribunal assessing the effects of residential schooling on the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. I urge all people who oppose genocide--from whatever source, against whatever victims--to read this book."--Jim Craven (Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi), citizen of the Blackfoot Nation and Professor of Economics, Clark College Ward Churchill is the author ofA Little Matter of Genocide, among other books. He is currently a Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder.Call Number: 373 Albuquerque Indian (Yearbooks) Library Use OnlyPublication Date: 1960, 1964, 1968
- Santa Fe Industrial School (Santa Fe Indian School) Students 1919-1929 by A haunting dream that will not relent pulls author Kent Nerburn back into the hidden world of Native America, where dreams have meaning, animals are teachers, and the "old ones" still have powers beyond our understanding. In this moving narrative, we travel through the lands of the Lakota and the Ojibwe, where we encounter a strange little girl with an unnerving connection to the past, a forgotten asylum that history has tried to hide, and the complex, unforgettable characters wehave come to know fromNeither Wolf nor Dog andThe Wolf at Twilight. Part history, part mystery, part spiritual journey and teaching story,The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo is filled with the profound insight into humanity and Native American culture we have come to expect from Nerburn's journeys. As the American Indian College Fund has stated, once you have encountered Nerburn's stirring evocations of America's high plains and incisive insights into the human heart, "you can never look at the world, or at people, the same way again."Call Number: 978.956 Indian School Library Use OnlyPublication Date: 2014
- Santa Fe Indian School Register of Pupils, 1890-1899 by Register of students admitted, 1890-1899, to the Santa Fe Indian School, including Indian name, English name, agency, nation, band or town, father's name, sex, if parents are living or dead, native blood percentage, age, height, weight, forced inspiration (lung test), forced expiration, date arrived at school, for what period extended, remarks. Also includes list of students sent to country homes, and discharged students. Notes: These pages were digitally copied in 2019 from a ledger at the National Archives and Records Administration in Denver, Colorado, which is part of Record Group 75.20.42 Records of the Santa Fe Indian School.Call Number: 978.956 Indian School Library Use OnlyPublication Date: 1890-1899
Right Place, Right Time by
This book chronicles the journey of a Pueblo of Laguna Native, beginning with his early life on an Indian Reservation through Indian boarding school, college, and employment and experiences made possible in part by the enactments of legislation and judicial decisions. Story about importance of family, culture and societal changes
Call Number: 929.2 Guwatimu Library Use Only- Records Created by the Santa Fe Indian School, 1090-1918 by Microfilm copy of 68 volumes and 6.5 cubic feet of unbound records created by the Santa Fe Indian School between 1890 and 1918. "Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, record group 75. M-1473"Call Number: 970.4 Santa Fe Library Use OnlyPublication Date: 1966
- Reference guide to the content of the Santa Fe Indian School, 1890-1918 by Guide created by library staff to the microfilm copy created by the National Archives and Records and Administration of 68 volumes and 6.5 cubic feet of unbound records created by the Santa Fe Indian School between 1890 and 1918. The records are on 38 rolls of microfilm. The guide gives an overview of what is included on each reel. "Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, record group 75. M-1473."Call Number: 970.4 Santa Fe (microfilm tools) Library Use OnlyPublication Date: 2017
- Native American Obituaries: a project of the Farmington, NM Family History Center by Includes obituaries from: The Daily Times of Farmington New Mexico, Winslow Mail, Montezuma Valley Sun, Cortez Journal, Navajo Times and Lake Powell Chronicle. These obituaries are of Native Americans who lived in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah and died between 1977 and 2000.Call Number: Electronic Resource Library Use OnlyPublication Date: 2001
resources
Library Resources
These can include books from the catalog, media, pamphlets, periodicals, and vertical files, which are collections of ephemera. Some items are library use only.
Special Collections Library
Vertical Files at Special Collections Library
- Albuquerque Indian School [vertical file]Call Number: NM Institutions & Agencies, Library Use Only
- Indians - Education [vertical file]Call Number: NM Indians, Library Use Only
Books at Special Collections Library
Education for Extinction by
The last "Indian War" was fought against Native American children in the dormitories and classrooms of government boarding schools. Only by removing Indian children from their homes for extended periods of time, policymakers reasoned, could white "civilization" take root while childhood memories of "savagism" gradually faded to the point of extinction. In the words of one official: "Kill the Indian and save the man." Education for Extinction offers the first comprehensive account of this dispiriting effort. Much more than a study of federal Indian policy, this book vividly details the day-to-day experiences of Indian youth living in a "total institution" designed to reconstruct them both psychologically and culturally. The assault on identity came in many forms: the shearing off of braids, the assignment of new names, uniformed drill routines, humiliating punishments, relentless attacks on native religious beliefs, patriotic indoctrinations, suppression of tribal languages, Victorian gender rituals, football contests, and industrial training. Especially poignant is Adams's description of the ways in which students resisted or accommodated themselves to forced assimilation. Many converted to varying degrees, but others plotted escapes, committed arson, and devised ingenious strategies of passive resistance. Adams also argues that many of those who seemingly cooperated with the system were more than passive players in this drama, that the response of accommodation was not synonymous with cultural surrender. This is especially apparent in his analysis of students who returned to the reservation. He reveals the various ways in which graduates struggled to make sense of their lives and selectively drew upon their school experience in negotiating personal and tribal survival in a world increasingly dominated by white men. The discussion comes full circle when Adams reviews the government's gradual retreat from the assimilationist vision. Partly because of persistent student resistance, but also partly because of a complex and sometimes contradictory set of progressive, humanitarian, and racist motivations, policymakers did eventually come to view boarding schools less enthusiastically. Based upon extensive use of government archives, Indian and teacher autobiographies, and school newspapers, Adams's moving account is essential reading for scholars and general readers alike interested in Western history, Native American studies, American race relations, education history, and multiculturalism.
Call Number: 978.900496 Mock Library Use Only
Away from Home by
"Artfully weaving old photographs, first-person accounts, and well-organized text and verse, the editors present important and predominantly Native views of some 'good, bad, and ugly' aspects of Indian boarding school life.--Choice
Call Number: 305.800978 Ruffin Library Use Only- Santa Fe Indian School YearbookCall Number: 373 Indian School (Yearbooks) Library Use Only
- Suggested Books for Indian Schools by An annotated list which includes library books, recommended textbooks, reference material, and maps, selected with special reference to the interests and activities of rural communities.Call Number: 375.089 Indian Library Use OnlyPublication Date: 1962
No Parole Today by
This first collection, in prose memoir and poetry, of the work of a Navajo poet and teacher describes attending a government school for Indian children and the challenge it presented to her socially, culturally, and expressively. Laura Tohe says this of her experience: "I was born in Fort Defiance, Arizona, and raised on the Diné (Navajo) Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. I grew up speaking Diné as my primary language. For a while we lived near Coyote Canyon with my grandparents while my parents operated the Tohe Coal Mine, a family business. After the mine closed, my mother moved us to Crystal, New Mexico, where she worked at the boarding school. I grew up without television in the beautiful Chuska Mountains, where only a dirt road connected us to the rest of the world. "While growing up I heard stories all around me. As we drove down the dusty reservation road, my mother told many Diné stories. I liked to listen to her and Grandma gossip. Sometimes she would catch me eavesdropping and make me leave. My first publication originates from a story given to my mother by her great-grandmother."
Call Number: 811 Tohe Library Use Only- Albuquerque Indian School Developement Legislation by Adopted by the Albuquerque City Council, August 15, 2005.Call Number: 711.4 Albuquerque Indian School Site Library Use OnlyPublication Date: August 15, 2005
Videorecordings
- Albuquerque Indian School [videorecording (DVD)] by Also Available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YjwzAptqfICall Number: 978.9 Albuquerque 2018 Library Use Only
- Our spirits don't speak English [videorecording (DVD)] by Directed by Chip Richie ; written by Dan Agent. "[U]ncovers the dark history of U.S. Government policy which took Indian children from their homes, forced them into boarding schools and enacted a policy of educating them in the ways of Western Society. This DVD gives a voice to the countless Indian children forced through a system designed to strip them of their Native American culture, heritage and traditions"--www.richheape.com.Call Number: 371.828 Our
