From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Steele Indian School Park
Steele Indian School Park
Steele Indian School Park tween Barron Collier Company and Opus West Corpora-
tion on land acquired in the exchange). At the time, Bar-
Location Phoenix, Arizona ron Collier Company also established a $35 million trust
Coordinates 33°29′52.0116″N 112°4′11.0316″W / fund for the education of Native children in Arizona. The
33.497781°N 112.069731°W / 33.497781; park is named after Horace C. Steele, a local business-
-112.069731Coordinates: 33°29′52.0116″N man and philanthropist; his charitable foundation donat-
112°4′11.0316″W / 33.497781°N
ed $2.5 million dollars to start development of the park.
112.069731°W / 33.497781; -112.069731
The park opened in late 2001.[3] Some of the buildings are
Created 2001 (2001) on the National Register of Historic Places and are being
Website http://phoenix.gov/PARKS/sisp.html
renovated; some of the alumni of the school want to use
a few of these buildings as museum space documenting
Steele Indian School Park is located on the northeast cor- the school’s history, as well as for a more general Native
ner of Indian School Road and Central Avenue in American cultural center[4].
Phoenix, Arizona[1]. The park is the site of an exhibition of Native Amer-
The park is on the site of the Phoenix Indian School, ican arts and crafts organized by the Pueblo Grande Mu-
one of several boarding schools owned and operated by seum[1] and the Arizona Indian Festival.[5] The city of
the U.S. government, designed in the late 19th century to Phoenix has held its annual Fourth of July fireworks dis-
socialize and assimilate Native Americans into the domi- play at the park for several years.
nant Euro-American socio-cultural system. These schools In 2007, the park was the site of a nationally-covered
became controversial in later decades for the alleged accident involving two television news helicopters that
mistreatment of their students, as well as the suppres- killed the occupants of both aircraft.[6]
sion and prohibition of the students’ indigenous culture The park is open 364 days a year, and offers ponds to
and languages. The Phoenix school began operations on fish.[citation needed] It is served by the Indian School station
the site in 1892. In the late 1980s it was declared un- on the METRO Light Rail system.
necessary as most Native students attended schools ei-
ther in the general community, or on their own reser- References
vations, by this time; also, the land on which the school
[1] ^ Insiders’ Guide to Phoenix, pg. 209
was built, now part of a busy commercial district in Cen-
[2] http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/
tral Phoenix, was much too financially valuable by this
phoenix/
time to justify the school’s continued operation.[2] After
[3] http://phoenix.gov/PARKS/history.html
the school shut down for good in 1990, the buildings and
[4] http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/
grounds sat vacant for a few years.
11/05/20081105steele1105.html
Indian School Road, on which the former school and
[5] Arizona Indian Festival
the current park sits, is a major arterial street connecting
[6] Ariz. reporters cover their own tragedy
Phoenix and its western suburbs, such as Tolleson and
Litchfield Park, with Scottsdale and the Salt River Pima-
Maricopa Indian Community to the east; it is presumably External links
named for the school.
The city of Phoenix obtained the land in 1996 through Media related to Phoenix Indian School at Wikimedia
an intricate three-way land exchange involving the Commons
Florida-based Barron Collier Company and the federal
government (the Bank of America Tower was built in the
late 1990s in downtown Phoenix by a partnership be-
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steele_Indian_School_Park&oldid=448828513"
Categories:
• Parks in Arizona
• Parks in Phoenix, Arizona
• Assimilation of indigenous peoples of North America
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Steele Indian School Park
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