At least 78 Native American children died at Colorado boarding schools designed to strip them of their Indigenous language, culture and heritage, according to a new investigation recently published by the Washington Post. The newspaper’s yearlong reporting project — relying on government and boarding school records, newspaper obituaries, death certificates and other documents — found three times as many students died at these schools nationwide than the federal government previously had identified. In Colorado, the Washington Post found 13 more children died at the state’s five schools than History Colorado identified in 2023, though that organization’s 139-page report focused only on the two most prominent schools. History Colorado found at least 65 children died at Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School and the Grand Junction Indian Boarding School, also known as the Teller Institute. The new investigation found an additional nine students died at the Ute Mountain Boarding School in Towaoc, six died at the Southern Ute Boarding School in Ignacio and two died at the Good Shepherd Industrial School in Denver. The U.S.