Last year the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition hosted and released a series of webinars and we are so grateful for all of you that were able to join us for these very informative presentations and important conversations. While we will be hosting another series of webinars later this year, we thought it would be helpful to offer our previous episodes again on our YouTube page for those who may have missed them last year or who might want to view them again.
Over the next few weeks we will re-release two episodes per week. We encourage you to watch and consider inviting others to watch with you!
We want to say thank you again to all of our presenters for sharing their knowledge about Indian boarding schools and their wisdom on the importance of sharing our stories, the truth, and healing. Our continued learning about the Indian Boarding School Era and telling the truth are two ways to let the world know that #WeAreHealing.
Episode 1: Truth in History: Federal Indian Boarding Schools in the U.S. (February 7, 2019—12-1:15pm)
The NABS 2019 Webinar Series begins with an overview of the federal boarding school system in the United States. Christine Diindiisi McCleave, M.A., Executive Officer of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, will discuss the federal policies that led to these schools, what we know about how they were operated, and the impacts these institutions had on Native children and families. Ms. McCleave is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Her passion for boarding school healing comes from her grandfather, who attended Marty Catholic Indian Boarding School in SD and Haskell Indian Boarding School in Kansas. Her great-grandfather attended Carlisle Indian School from 1910-1915, was recruited there by Coach Pop Warner, and played football with Jim Thorpe. Ms. McCleave has a Masters of Arts in Leadership from Augsburg University. She conducted her thesis research on the spectrum of spiritual practices regarding traditional Native American spirituality and Christianity and the impact of the boarding schools on spiritual activities today. She also graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Communication Studies from Northwestern College and previously worked in Human Resources management at Aon Hewitt and in Communications and Marketing at Indian Land Tenure Foundation.
Episode 2: American Indian Boarding Schools: Disease, Death, and the National Archives
In this webinar, Preston McBride, M.A. will discuss his research on death and disease in U.S. Indian boarding schools and how the state of boarding school records makes this research challenging. Mr. McBride is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at UCLA and a descendant of the Comanche Nation (unenrolled). As a quantitative historian of American Indian experiences interested in the history of medicine, Mr. McBride’s current scholarship focuses on disease in federal American Indian off-reservation boarding schools from their creation in 1879 through the so-called 1934 Indian New Deal. Before coming to UCLA, he received his M.A. in Liberal Studies, and B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College.