MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now a story about how a glimpse of beauty from an ugly chapter in American history is being preserved. Indian boarding schools were run by the federal government and churches for more than a century for the purpose of stripping Indigenous children of their cultural identities. Thousands were taken from their families, forbidden to wear traditional clothing or speak native languages, and many suffered physical and sexual abuse. But at one school in Utah, students were encouraged to express themselves through art. Macy Lipkin with member station KUER reports on an exhibition of work from students.
MACY LIPKIN, BYLINE: People pack into the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University for an opening reception recently. They're here to see murals and photographs from the former Intermountain Indian School.
LORINA ANTONIO: This shows a lot about the Navajo reservation.
LIPKIN: Lorina Antonio is a retiree from Salt Lake City and a leader among Intermountain alumni. She's looking at a photograph of a mural from the now-demolished school. It shows the orange sand and rocks of Monument Valley.
ANTONIO: That's the way our land is back home - a lot of open spaces.
LIPKIN: In a corner, a mural saved from the school shows a family standing outside a hogan. That's a traditional Dine or Navajo home. Orange buttes stand tall against a blue sky. Other Dine pass by in a string of covered wagons. It's called "Returning Home." A student at Intermountain painted it in the '60s. Antonio says she sees the artist's homesickness. She came to Intermountain when she was 10.
ANTONIO: But I was so young, I didn't understand. When I first got there, I really cried because I didn't know where I was.
LIPKIN: The federal government ran the Intermountain Indian School from 1950 to 1984. More than 20,000 Navajo students attended over the years, as did kids from other tribes. Utah State University bought the land nearly three decades later. A faculty member cut some murals from the walls before the buildings were torn down. Eleven restored murals are on display for the first time. Others only exist as photos now. The school was a veritable gallery of art by the '80s, according to the book "Returning Home: Dine Creative Works From The Intermountain Indian School." Dine historian Farina King is a co-author. She says the student artwork speaks to humanity.
FARINA KING: Such as the very questions of what it means to be human. What does home mean? What is the relationship between people and land and water?
LIPKIN: Intermountain began as a school for Navajo youth, but in the '70s, it opened to all Native children in the U.S. Fights sometimes broke out among students of different tribes. But Lorina Antonio also remembers classmates sharing their cultures and feelings through art.
ANTONIO: It got to be an art competition between the Navajo and the intertribal.
LIPKIN: Well-known Apache artist Allan Houser established the school's art program. His murals inspired students to paint traditional landscapes and figures on the walls. As the school became more diverse, so did the art. One photo shows two dancers painted next to each other. The colors and clothes reflect different tribes. Other portraits show men who are Tohono O'odham and Northern Paiute. King says there's a lot to learn today from what Native students crafted.
KING: They were planting seeds for the future even while it also was, at that time, for them, serving different purposes, too. Whether it was bringing that peace and harmony into their lives in some very tumultuous times for them.
LIPKIN: The show of murals and photos from the Intermountain Indian School is on display through the middle of January.
For NPR News, I'm Macy Lipkin in Logan, Utah.
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