10/12/2026
There is a deep, interwoven history that connects the experiences of Indigenous peoples and Japanese Americans. The lands from which Indigenous tribes were violently removed are the same lands on which the U.S. military later forcibly relocated Japanese Americans.
Today, we are honored to feature a reflection of past and current overlap by Davina Two Bears of the Diné (Navajo) tribe, and Assistant Professor at Arizona State University. She currently works on a community accountable archaeological project at the old site of the Leupp Indian School in Arizona, which also served as the location of a Citizen Isolation Center, where nearly 80 Nisei and Kibei (second generation Japanese Americans educated in Japan) men labeled as “troublemakers” were taken out of WRA camps and sent to live in 1943. Davina details her family’s connection to the land and the interwoven experiences of government subjugation, attempted cultural erasure and how oral histories from her community elders shed light on this history today.
“I grew up both on and off the Navajo reservation. My maternal grandparents come from a community called Tsidii To’ii or Birdsprings, Arizona, which is next to Leupp. When I was a child my grandparents told me stories of their experiences attending the Leupp Indian School, which was a federal Indian boarding school run by the U.S. government in the early 20th century. At that time the U.S. government’s Indian education policy was meant to assimilate Native American children into Western society through a vocational education. My grandmother was only five years old in 1925 when her parents hid her under sheepskins from the police, who were collecting Navajo children to attend school. Unfortunately, the police threatened her father with jail if he did not surrender his daughter. Once at Leupp, the school administration kept my grandmother and all the other Navajo children for nine months, where they spent part of their time in school, and part of their time laboring in the kitchen, agricultural fields, a boiler house and so on. The U.S. government forbade children to speak the Navajo language, or they would be punished. The Leupp Indian School operated in a harsh militaristic fashion. For my dissertation, I researched stories of survivance – for example, how young Navajo children found small ways to “fight back,” like stealing food from the kitchen when they were starving.
My colleagues (historical archaeologists Dr. Jun Sunseri of UC Berkeley and Dr. Koji Lau-Ozawa of UCLA) and I received permission from the Navajo Nation government and the Leupp and Birdsprings Chapters to work on this project. We are conducting archival research, oral history interviews, and non-destructive archeological survey, mapping, and analysis of the Leupp site to produce educational products for the community. From oral history interviews with Navajo elders, the U.S. government gave no explanation or justification on why they closed Leupp Indian School in 1942. They told local Navajos to stay away from their shuttered school and to have no interactions with the Japanese American men imprisoned there. Since the Leupp Trading Post was next to the school, many Navajo families continued to travel near the Leupp Isolation Center to buy food and supplies. They witnessed the Japanese American men behind the fenceline playing games like baseball and basketball, and fixing trucks. My grandmother said she felt sorry for the men and ignored the U.S. government’s rules when she brought food to share with the Japanese men over the fenceline.”
Learn more about this complex, overlapping history and ongoing community solidarity between Indigenous communities and Japanese Americans by revisiting this Tadaima livestream co-presented by Densho and featuring Davina Two Bears: https://densho.org/catalyst/japanese-american-incarceration-on-indigenous-lands/
