Once designed to strip Native students of culture, this school now safeguards it : NPR

The Santa Fe Indian School sits off a short road in the middle of the New Mexico city. Its half dozen stucco buildings blend into the flat, dusty landscape around it.

“We were established in 1890 as a Native American boarding school,” Kyle Shutiva, a junior at the school, says. “It’s still a boarding school, but not how people would expect.”

For more than a century federal Indian boarding schools worked to break tribal bonds by isolating children from their families and forbidding traditional practices.

SFIS’s campus, like many boarding schools of its kind, has a painful history. There are stories of forced assimilation and harsh punishment for students speaking their Native languages from its earliest days – but this school developed differently.

The Santa Fe Indian School was established in the late 1800s by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) as a federal, off-reservation boarding school with the primary goal of assimilating Native Americans.

Photo provided by the Santa Fe Indian School

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Photo provided by the Santa Fe Indian School

Now, in between classes students walk around the campus in school sweatshirts with moccasins or traditional jewelry like bow guards. Inside the library, students gather surrounded by murals and photos of alumni going back to the early 20th century.

“This area right here is our Native American section,” Shutiva says, pointing to a few shelves in a sun-lit portion of the library. Under the Dewey Decimal System Native American materials are categorized under 970 or “History of North America.” Students like Shutiva are helping to re-categorize the library.

Kyle Shutiva is a student at SFIS.

Esha Chiocchio for NPR

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Esha Chiocchio for NPR

“We’re just trying to decolonize this area,” he says. “Because [the] 970s show that Native Americans are history, but we’re still here, truly.”

A different path 

Located in the middle of Santa Fe, SFIS wasn’t quite as isolated as other federal boarding schools. The school became a training ground for many Native artists as early as the 1930s, after New Deal-era public works money flowed into the surrounding area.

“Santa Fe Indian School was lucky because there was a culture here in Northern New Mexico,” says Christie Abeyta, the school’s superintendent. “Highlighting art, craftsmanship, carpentry and architecture.”

Famous artists like Georgia O’Keeffe and Dorothy Dunn took an interest in Native art and the Institute of American Indian Art was founded nearby. Some of those instructors also taught at the boarding school.

Students and artists painted murals on the walls of the schools.

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Photo provided by the Santa Fe Indian School

For the last 50 years it has also been completely independent from the federal government.

“When we became tribally controlled,” Lisa Longeteig, the school’s librarian says. “That was a key piece.”