WWU to host Susan Burch May 18 for 'Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and beyond Institutions'

Western's Disability Studies Steering Committee, History Department, English Department, and Anthropology Department will host Susan Burch, professor and director of American Studies at Middlebury College, for "Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and beyond Institutions" from 4-5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 18 via Zoom.

Between 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in South Dakota. But detention at the Indian Asylum, as families experienced it, was not the beginning or end of the story. For them, Canton Asylum was one of many places of imposed removal and confinement, including reservations, boarding schools, orphanages, and prison-hospitals. Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the the places that held them. 

Save the link: Connect to the May 18 presentation here.