Event Calendar

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.

Away From Home 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. 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 during that time period, and found that students often endured "rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse."

EPMH seeks to take this exhibit a step further, by collaborating with local tribal leaders, scholars, community members, and activists, investigate the impact these boarding schools have had El Paso's own Indigenous community. This expanded local programming and curricula will place the exhibit's content within the context of the local community's history and heritage.