The University of Arizona Press
August 30, 2022
Congratulations to University of Arizona Press author’s Farina Noelani King, Michael P. Taylor, and James R. Swensen for their book Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School placing as finalist for Best Book in Utah History from the Utah Division of State History and Utah State Historical Society.
Returning Home features and contextualizes the creative works of Diné (Navajo) boarding school students at the Intermountain Indian School, which was the largest federal Indian boarding school between 1950 and 1984. Diné student art and poetry reveal ways that boarding school students sustained and contributed to Indigenous cultures and communities despite assimilationist agendas and pressures.
This book works to recover the lived experiences of Native American boarding school students through creative works, student interviews, and scholarly collaboration. It shows the complex agency and ability of Indigenous youth to maintain their Diné culture within the colonial spaces that were designed to alienate them from their communities and customs.
