Excerpt: In the early 2000s, Faith O’Neil (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) sought answers about what had happened to her family members incarcerated at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians—a federal facility opened in South Dakota in1902 and overseen by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Around the same time, I sought answers in the National Archives, trying to understand lived histories in Canton’s locked wards. As I researched and started writing a book about people on the inside of Canton and their kin outside of it, I collaborated with tribal historians and activists. When I began contacting descendants to offer digital copies of archived sources about their kin, Faith O’Neil answered my letter. O’Neil’s decision to share her own historical sources and family memories with me, and our joint research efforts while I completed my book project, set in motion a different approach to interpreting institutions and Western history.