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Davina Two Bears – The Leupp Isolation Center Historical Site: Interconnections of Navajo and Japanese American History during World War II
February 20, 2023 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm MST
THIS LECTURE IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC BUT YOU MUST CLICK HERE TO PREREGISTER
The Old Leupp Boarding School was a federal Indian boarding school in operation on the southwest Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona from 1909-1942, but after the school closed, the United States War Department reused the OLBS as a Japanese Citizen Isolation Center in 1943 during World War II. Today, the site of Old Leupp exists as a historical archaeological site with the potential for community-based, collaborative, Indigenous archaeological or heritage projects. For this presentation, I explore this dual history of oppression and survivance at the Old Leupp Boarding School/Leupp Isolation Center.
Davina Ruth Two Bears is a Diné (Navajo) originally from Birdsprings, Arizona. She is currently a visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Swarthmore College. In 2019 Davina graduated from Indiana University and received a Ph.D. in Anthropology with an emphasis on Archaeology and a Ph.D. Minor in Native American and Indigenous Studies. Her dissertation topic derives from her grandparents’ oral history about the Old Leupp Boarding School (OLBS), an early twentieth-century Federal Indian Boarding School located on the southwestern Navajo Reservation. Using decolonizing research methods, including interviews with Navajo elders and a critical analysis of historical records and photographs, Davina investigates the early history of the OLBS (1909-1942) focusing on how Navajo children resisted and survived assimilation within the context of the OLBS.
Suggested Readings
Davina R. Two Bears. (2021) Researching My Heritage: The Old Leupp Boarding School Historic Site. KIVA 87:3 pages 336-353.
J. Burton, M. Farrell, F. Lord and R. Lord (1999). Ch. 14 Citizen Isolation Centers. In Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of Japanese American Relocation Camps. Publication in Anthropology 74. Western Archaeology Conservation Center, National Park Service.
Lynne Horiuchi (2016) Spatial Jurisdictions, Historical Topographies, and Sovereignty at the Leupp Isolation Center, Amerasia Journal, 42:1, 82-102, DOI: 10.17953/aj.42.1.82