SOHA MEMBERS: You are invited to a virtual book discussion and research presentation with the author!
Featuring SOHA president, Dr. Farina King, Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School
Friday, February 4th from 10-11:30 am
Event link: https://tinyurl.com/Meet-the-AuthorDrKing
The American Indian Outreach, Maricopa Community College District, the History Program at Chandler-Gilbert Community College and the Center for Community & Civic Engagement at Mesa Community College are pleased to present Diné author, historian, and professor, Dr. Farina King, as she discusses her latest co-authored publication, Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School.
Please join us as we explore the lives of Diné (Navajo) youth who faced cultural and assimilationist hardships while attending the Intermountain Boarding School from 1950-1984—one of the largest federal Indian boarding schools in US history. As part of this discussion Dr. King examines how students utilized their creative writing and visual arts to not only explore their identities but to also perpetuate their ties to home and influence Indigenous cultures.
Farina King will outline how she examined creative works, student oral history interviews, and scholarly collaboration to highlight the lived experiences of Native American boarding school students as they utilized art to create Diné Bikéyah and the kinship that defined home for them. She will also discuss how her work transitioned from a traveling museum exhibit to a published volume and outline contemporary issues and the teaching of American Indian topics across curriculums today.
About Dr. Farina King: Farina King, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, is Associate Professor of History and affiliated faculty of Cherokee and Indigenous Studies at Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, in the homelands of the Cherokee Nation and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees. She is also the director and founder of the NSU Center for Indigenous Community Engagement. She received her Ph.D. at Arizona State University in History. King specializes in twentieth-century Native American Studies, especially American Indian boarding school histories. She is also the author of an earlier work entitled, The Earth Memory Compass: Diné Landscapes and Education in the Twentieth Century, and co-author with Michael P. Taylor and James R. Swensen of Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School (November 2021). She is the current President of the Southwest Oral History Association.
Southwest Oral History Association 