Fund publishing book on US Indian boarding school.

Dear donor,

I am seeking your financial support for an important project: to publish a book on the architecture, interior spaces and history of the largest of the United States off-reservation federal Indian boarding schools: The Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah. The school opened in 1950 to children from the Navajo reservation, housed in a set of military buildings left over from the former WWII hospital, Bushnell Military Hospital. In 1974 the school turned into an inter-tribal boarding school, gathering students from over 100 tribal communities. The school was closed permanently and boarded up in 1984.

In 1996, I gained permission to enter the buildings and begin photographing both the interior and exteriors of this vast network of buildings. I now hold an extensive spatial photographic archive of the architecture and what these empty buildings contained, their eventual transformation, their demolition, and the final clearing of the land. These buildings are no longer on the landscape.

I am in the very latter stages of this project which will be a book called ‘Eagle Village’’ My goal is to share the complex history of this school, and these buildings, which opened as a school to assimilate Native American children and, by its closure, was a school the students fought to keep open when the Reagan administration suspended further funding for it.

I have self-funded this project for decades but simply do not have the funds to pay for the printing of the book. I plan to create a limited edition artist book of 200 copies. I am in the final phase of the book design and the book intends to be a 400 page hardcover book with my original photographs, writing from a multitude of sources (interview, congressional records, my writing), and images of objects found in the school buildings and curtains from the dormitory buildings. I consider this book to be a creatively designed archive of information.

I was awarded a Visiting Scholar fellowship for this project in 2021 from Brigham Young University’s Charles Redd Center for Western Studies. I received my Master of Fine Arts from Utah State University in 1996 and began this project soon after my graduation. I am a teacher of art in Montreal, mother, and a practicing artist. I have devoted my career to this project and am at the point where I need financial help to finish it so I can share this important story with the wider world at a time when we are learning about this important chapter in our collective history. There is a lot to learn from this place.

Thank you for helping to make it happen. All funds will be used for the printing of this book.