Buried But Not Forgotten

 Colorado Archeologist Describes Her Work Honoring the Lives of Indian Boarding School Students

2/14/2025  By Nancy Marie Spears 

Colorado state archeologist Holly Norton led a team that used ground-penetrating radar, near-infrared photography and drones to search for remains of Native children who attended boarding schools. Provided photo.

To determine how many children might be buried on the former site of a Colorado Indian boarding school, state archeologist Holly Norton and her team traveled to a swath of land where a forgotten cemetery once stood. Using ground-penetrating radar, near-infrared photography and drones, they scoured a site as large as 68 football fields — roughly 90 acres of ankle-sweeping prairie grassland.

The search turned up signs of disturbed soil beneath the hard earth, rough shafts believed to have cradled small bodies. In all, Norton’s team reported finding the resting places of 31 children who had attended the Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School more than a century ago. 

Norton, state archaeologist and deputy state historic preservation officer, led the one-year effort. The undertaking — part of a larger examination of the two former boarding schools in the state — was initiated by legislation that made clear the mandate: “In order to heal from the generational trauma, we must confront the past and shed light on the hidden cruelty.’’

Colorado’s work mirrors nationwide efforts to document the systemic abuse endured by Indigenous children who attend federally-operated or church-run Indian boarding schools — a forced assimilation attempt that began in the 1800s and endured for over a century. In 2022 and 2024, the Department of the Interior released its first-ever acknowledgment of the federal government’s genocidal policies, in reports that confirmed nearly 1,000 student deaths. Last year, President Joe Biden apologized for the government’s culpability. 

As part of the Colorado project, a 13-member team of archeologists, geophysical specialists and archivists spent hundreds of hours combing through roughly 5,500 pages of documents to build the backstory of students’ lives. 

The investigation focused on the Fort Lewis site in Hesperus and the state’s other federal Indian boarding school, the Teller Institute in Grand Junction. Children at both schools endured neglect and abuse, unsanitary conditions, and ravaging outbreaks of tuberculosis and trachoma, according to the report authored by Norton and published in June 2023.

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