El Paso Museum of History | 510 N. Santa Fe St., El Paso | October 13, 2022
THF Executive Director David Preziosi and former THF Director Joe Nebhan will host a grant presentation for the El Paso Museum of History Foundation on Thursday, October 13. EPMHF was awarded a grant to expand programming for the travelling exhibition "Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories," coming to the Museum in November 2022.
The exhibit explores off-reservation boarding schools through photographs, artifacts, oral histories and first-person accounts from the Indigenous people who forcibly attended these schools, shedding light on a little known piece of American history that quietly impacted the lives of so many. As public interest on the subject has grown, more facts and stories have come to light. The U.S. Dept. of Interior's May 2022 report on federally run Indigenous boarding schools from 1819-1969 found that the U.S. ran or supported over 400 boarding schools in that time period, in which students endured "rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse."
EPMH seeks to take this exhibit a step further, by collaborating with tribal leaders, scholars, community members, and activists to investigate the impact these boarding schools have had El Paso's own Indigenous community. This expanded programming will include community guided round tables, enhanced curricula connecting local histories to existing exhibit content, and the recording of oral histories that could otherwise be lost to time.
Visit El Paso Museum of History's website for more current and upcoming exhibitions.
