BBQ+ launches the Boarding School History Project

With support from the Luce Foundation, BBQ+ is beginning the first stage of an investigation into the history of Indigenous boarding school education. Rather than documenting the general experiences of those subjected to the trauma of boarding schools, the project focuses specifically on how boarding school pedagogy has impacted Indigenous intellectual history and futurity.

Dr. Eli Nelson (Mohawk) and Dr. Elizabeth Rule (Chickasaw) lead the research team, which also includes the BBQ+ Library and two postdoctoral fellows. The postdoctoral fellowship position is currently open; applications will be reviewed beginning September 10th, and Native American and Indigenous candidates are particularly encouraged to apply.

The postdoctoral fellows will work with Indigenous communities and existing boarding school archives to collect material related to boarding school curricula and pedagogy. The research team will then collaboratively create a meta-archive that critically catalogs this material, aiming to document and reimagine the consequences of boarding school education. The archive will incorporate Indigenous and land-based archival methods, challenging colonial systems of knowledge organization and allowing tribal historians and Indigenous community members to catalog the contents for themselves.

In the final stage of the project, the team will develop a public-facing mobile application that allows users to engage with the archive through a map of Indigenous boarding schools and their impacts. In addition, K-12 and college educators will be able to access the archive and related teaching materials through BBQ+’s collection of open educational resources (OER).

BBQ+ is excited to begin this work, and we hope the project opens up avenues of inquiry and memory that allow researchers and communities to reclaim boarding schools as part of Indigenous intellectual history. We invite you to contact us at info@bbqplus.org if you’d like to learn more about the project or collaborate with us.