Category: The Indian School on Magnolia Ave

FIRST PEOPLES features The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue

On By Matthew Sakiestewa GilbertIn First Peoples, Indian boarding schools, Sherman Institute, The Indian School on Magnolia Ave, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Picture 17

This month Oregon State University Press officially launched my co-edited (with Clifford E. Trafzer and Lorene Sisquoc) book The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute. The book is part of the First Peoples, New Directions in Indigenous Studies, initiative. Yesterday, Natasha Varner at First Peoples published a post about the book on their blog. She quoted at length from my Conclusion. Here’s the first paragraph of my Conclusion which I titled “An Open Vault”:

On a warm October day in 2004, I drove my car south on Magnolia Avenue in Riverside and made my way to Sherman Indian High School for the Sherman Indian Museum Open House. The event was a festive occasion, as alumni from across the nation came together to remember their school days and visit with old friends. Outside the Museum, the school’s choir was singing their alma mater, “The Purple and Gold,” and a group of older Sherman alums were taking refuge from the heat by sitting in the shade of a large palm tree. Near the school’s flagpole, children were laughing and playing, while their parents listened contentedly to the choir. The smell of frybread permeated the air.

To read the entire Conclusion, and to learn more about the book, be sure to check out the First Peoples website. They have done a terrific job in promoting the book on-line and at various academic conferences.

All royalties from this book will go to help fund educational and cultural programming at the Sherman Indian Museum in Riverside, CA.

The Indian School on Magnolia Ave: Voices and Images From Sherman Institute (Oregon State University Press)

On By Matthew Sakiestewa GilbertIn Indian boarding schools, Sherman Institute, The Indian School on Magnolia Ave5 Comments

I recently co-edited a book (with Clifford E. Trafzer and Lorene Sisquoc) on Sherman Institute.  It will appear soon with Oregon State University Press. Here’s a sneak peek at the cover. The cover depicts a Navajo student reading a book entitled “Peter’s Family” (1930s). We uncovered this photo at the Sherman Indian Museum archive in Riverside, California. The title of the photo is “See How We Read.”

If you have a minute, be sure to visit Debbie Reese’s blog post where she writes at length about “Peter’s Family.” The photo was taken during the school’s Special Five-Year Navajo Program (late 1940s and 1950s).  Jon Ille, an advanced  Ph.D. student in history at UC Riverside, wrote a chapter in our book about this Program. I’ll write more about the anthology as the book’s launch date (Fall 2012) gets closer.