Exhibition brings Indian boarding school records to light

A new exhibition is surfacing records related to Indian boarding schools, according to reporting originally published by Montana Free Press and carried by the Billings Gazette and the Missoula Missoulian. The reports indicate that the exhibition aims to bring these records to public attention, though specifics about the exhibition's content, location, or organizers were not detailed in the available coverage.

Reporter's background

The article's author, Nora Mabie, covers Indigenous affairs at Montana Free Press. Her prior experience includes covering Indigenous communities at the five Lee Montana newspapers — the Missoulian, Billings Gazette, Independent Record (Helena), Ravalli Republic, and Montana Standard (Butte) — and tribal affairs for the Great Falls Tribune. According to the report, Mabie's journalism regarding the return of ancestral remains and disparities in Native life expectancy has earned state and national awards. She was a 2023 National Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and a McGraw Center for Business Journalism Fellow from 2024 to 2025. Mabie is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and is based in Missoula. She can be reached at nmabie@montanafreepress.org and on social media.