Old Leupp Boarding School and Nikkei Isolation Center: A Community-Accountable Archaeological Partnership

The Old Leupp Boarding School (OLBS) historical archaeological site is a significant place that is important to the Diné (Navajo). The U.S. Federal Government established a federal Indian boarding school to educate Navajo children from 1909 to 1942. After the start of World War II in 1943, the U.S. War Department reutilized the OLBS as a Japanese Isolation Center. This former United States federal Indian boarding school and Citizens Isolation Center deeply impacts the community histories of both the Diné and Nikkei (Japanese Americans). Davina Ruth Two Bears will briefly speak about the community-accountable archaeological project that is currently underway that centers the history and archaeology of the Old Leupp site.

Davina Ruth Two Bears is Diné (Navajo) originally from the community of Birdsprings on the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona. In 2019 Davina received her PhD from Indiana University-Bloomington in anthropology with an emphasis in archaeology, and a PhD minor in Native American Indigenous Studies. She is currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Arizona State University in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. Davina’s current community-based research of the Old Leupp Boarding School, an early 20th century federal Indian boarding school, focuses on its reuse as a Japanese Isolation Center in 1943 during World War II.

This event is free for ASU Students, Staff, and Faculty with their Sun Card and for Indigenous Peoples with their Tribal ID.