Sound recordings of interviews and related doctoral dissertation on Saint Joseph's Indian Industrial School, Keshena, Wisconsin, a Catholic mission school on the Menominee Indian Reservation.

Gift of Sarah Shillinger, 1996. Processed by Mark G. Thiel, 1997.

Historical Note

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, operated the Saint Joseph's School from 1883-1980, which closed in 1980. The interview respondents were former students (members of the Menominee tribe) or teachers (Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet); one respondent was both.

Subsequently, the interviewer wrote her doctoral dissertation with the interviews and archival research into the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions Records. In 2008, the dissertation was published by Edwin Mellen Press as A Case Study of the American Indian Boarding School Movement: An Oral History of Saint Joseph's Indian Industrial School. Dr. Shillinger's dissertation can also be found in the University of Pennsylvania's Scholarly Commons.

Other oral history interviews can be found at the Carondelet Consolidated Archive, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. 

See also -- St. Michael Church, Keshena, Wisconsin, in Marquette's Guide to Catholic Records about Native Americans in the United States.

Scope and Content

The collection includes the interviews in three sound formats: micro and audio cassettes, and wav files. A photocopy of the dissertation is included in the collection.

 

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