Polis signs bill to investigate history of abuse and death at Colorado's Indian Boarding Schools

DURANGO, Colo. — Governor Jared Polis signed a bill May 24 that will establish a research program to investigate “the events, physical and emotional abuse, and deaths that occurred at federal Indian boarding schools in Colorado.”

The research will also look into the “victimization of families of youth forced to attend the boarding schools and the intergenerational impacts of the abuse.”

The bill signing took place on the campus of Fort Lewis College in Durango. As the name suggests, Fort Lewis was a military post in the late 19th century. But then the army base transitioned into an Indian Boarding School that operated for nearly two decades, from 1891 to 1910. It was an institution designed to forcefully erase the culture of Native American children.

[Related: Native students use farming to help heal the generational wounds left by Indian Boarding Schools]

Fort Lewis was one of five Indian Boarding Schools in Colorado, according to a recent report by the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative.

The boarding schools in Colorado were:

• Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School
• Good Shepherd Industrial School (Denver)
• Grand Junction Indian School (Grand Junction)
• Southern Ute Boarding School (Ignacio)
• Ute Mountain Boarding School (Towaoc)

History Colorado will lead the research into Colorado’s sordid history of Indian Boarding Schools. According to the bill, History Colorado is required to send periodic updates — in addition to a final report — to the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs, the Southern Ute Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. The bill appropriates more than $600,000 to History Colorado for the research.

Rocky Mountain PBS recently reported on Fort Lewis College reckoning with its painful history. For decades, the campus’ clock tower displayed three placards — each depicting different eras of Fort Lewis history — without any details about the traumatic, violent history of the boarding school years. That changed last year when university official removed the panels.

“Some of the language [on the panels] is overly simplistic in its view of the purpose of Indian boarding schools,” explained Dr. Majel Boxer, Chair and Associate Professor of Native American & Indigenous Studies at the college. “It paints a picture of Indian boarding schools as beneficial to Native children, as teaching helpful and useful skills … So it really casts a positive light on Indian schools in general, and as Fort Lewis being positive, a good thing that happened to Native people. And of course, we know that that's not the case. There is a darker history that those panels don't fully encapsulate.”

[Related: Fort Lewis College removes inaccurate panels about the school's history as an Indian Boarding School]

Many of the boarding school students were kidnapped from their homes and families. They were beaten for speaking their own Native languages or for practicing any of their cultural and spiritual rituals. Fort Lewis College President Tom Stritikus has described it as “cultural genocide.”

“My biological parents and aunts and uncles attended these boarding schools,” said LeManuel Bitsóí, the Associate Vice President for Diversity Affairs at Fort Lewis College. Bitsóí is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. “So when they spoke in Navajo, they were punished or they were beaten. And when I ask my mother questions about her experience she doesn’t elaborate too much.”

[Related: Schools tried to forcibly assimilate Indigenous kids. Can the U.S. make amends?]

For more information, please visit The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

Kyle Cooke is the digital media manager at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at kylecooke@rmpbs.org.