2024 Oral History Association Annual Meeting

This panel features the collaborations of Indigenous communities, educators, and students who are a part of the growing initiatives for Indigenous truth telling of boarding schools, which seek to understand and share oral histories that introduce the public and Native American youth and communities to complicated Native American boarding school experiences.
Oklahoma Catholic Native Schools Project
Lisa Lynn Brooks, Montclair State University

Success of projects focused on Native American boarding school experiences depend on their intrinsic sensitivity and collaborative nature to develop trusting relationships with participants. However, the political landscape that provides the backdrop to this type of oral history collection can have an indelible mark on the collection process and the ultimate successfulness of the project. In 2021, the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City funded the Oklahoma Catholic Native Schools project to determine the effect of Catholic Indian boarding schools on the assimilation of the Native people in Oklahoma. Missteps in the early stages involving listening sessions at parishes near historic boarding school sites and negative press coverage diverted early attempts at participant recruitment for oral histories that focused on individual and family experiences with Catholic Boarding schools. This talk navigates the impact of cultural narratives in Oklahoma, including implicit bias, Catholic triumphalism, and wokeness, that stoked fear in religious and political entities to prevent an expansive investigation. Participant recruitment, public perception, and press coverage were ultimately impacted by fear and collective reframing of harm done to Native people in Oklahoma.Oral Histories of the Sac and Fox Boarding School
Ashley Moelling, University of Oklahoma

As a student research assistant and Indigenous archaeology scholar, Ashley Moelling (a Muscogee/Creek citizen) delves into archival sources to find and listen to voices of Sac and Fox boarding schoolers in Oklahoma. She is an intern at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History. She joined a team of researchers, led by Dr. Farina King, to learn about the Sac and Fox boarding school. She is spearheading the efforts to collaborate and follow the guidance of the Sac and Fox Nation in creating more curriculum and educational resources about boarding schools and how they affected communities.Voices of Oklahoma: Indigenous Archeology and History of Boarding Schools
Cheyenne Widdecke, University of Oklahoma

Cheyenne Widdecke is a graduate student studying anthropology with an emphasis on archaeology at the University of Oklahoma. She works for a program that has focused on archaeologies and histories of Native American boarding schools for high school students known as Voices of Oklahoma. She is also an assistant director of operations for the Oklahoma Public Archaeology Network (OKPAN), an OU organization that foster conversations about heritage across community and disciplinary borders, including the Voices of Oklahoma program. She highlight the work of Voices of Oklahoma and her work with ongoing relationship-building with the Sac and Fox Nation.Exploring the Legacy of Colonialism on Oklahoma Education: Using Historical Foundations of Education in Oklahoma to Understand Contemporary Education in Oklahoma and its Impacts on Native Youth
Savannah Slayton, University of Oklahoma

Savannah Slayton, a Cherokee citizen, is an undergraduate school who began to work with oral histories of boarding school survivors to understand the legacy of colonial settlement in Oklahoma and its impact on Native youth. She focuses on how Native youth learn through the lens of colonialism and the education system’s historical injustices. Under her mentored research with Dr. Farina King, she focuses on the perspectives of Native youth, educators, and community leaders to understand the ongoing impacts of colonialism, specifically boarding schools, on the education system in Oklahoma.Intergenerational Strength in Kiowa Family Oral Histories
Codie Horse-Topetchy, University of Oklahoma

Codie Horse-Topetchy is the descendant of boarding school survivors and shares the oral histories of her Kiowa family. She underscores the significance of intergenerational strength, which her family oral histories carry despite intergenerational trauma. She is a student researcher who assists Dr. Farina King with Indigenous oral histories in Oklahoma, especially relating to ecologies and traditional knowledge.
ABSTRACT: This panel features the collaborations of Indigenous communities, educators, and students who are a part of the growing initiatives for Indigenous truth telling of boarding schools, which seek to understand and share oral histories that introduce the public and Native American youth and communities to complicated Native American boarding school experiences. Oklahoma has one of the highest concentrations of Native American boarding schools, and this panel highlights various working relationships to listen and learn about the diversity of Indigenous experiences and contexts of the many peoples and Native Nations. Some of the panelists have been in service-learning and research-focused courses that feature Indigenous community-centered work to understand tribally specific and intertribal boarding schools and impacts on Native American education and people with storymaps and oral histories. Other panelists have launched a summer program for Native American high school students to work with Native Nations in Oklahoma to learn the histories and archaeologies of Native American boarding schools. Some panelists have launched oral history projects for denominational and non-denominational boarding school experiences. All the panelists will address the constellations of Native American boarding school experiences, which vary but are interconnected in Oklahoma where Indigenous peoples from over 39 Native Nations have been affected by over 70 different boarding schools.