St. Catherine’s Indian School Burns: A Suspect in Custody and a City Left Grieving

Around 3:45 on a Thursday afternoon, smoke began rising from Griffin Street in Santa Fe. Thick, dark columns of it, visible from much of downtown, curling up from the brick dormitories and chapel of the long-vacant former St. Catherine Indian School. By the time 30 firefighters had positioned themselves around the building, flames were already pushing through the windows and swallowing the tower at the top. It was the kind of fire that draws people out of their homes just to stand and watch — not knowing what to feel exactly, but knowing that something significant was ending.

The school had been closed since 1998, operating for more than a century before it quietly shut its doors. For decades after that, the property sat in a kind of institutional limbo — a historic landmark too expensive to renovate, too loaded with memory to simply demolish. It had been examined by developers. It had been discussed by city planners. A plan for the campus would be announced every few years, but it would never materialize. The obstacle was always the expense of making the building compliant with Santa Fe’s historic district regulations. In a somber and inadvertent way, the fire might have resolved an issue that no one could quite bring themselves to address.

At the scene, a suspect was apprehended. Outside the burning building, photographs showed officers handcuffing a man who appeared to be nude while onlookers watched. In the early hours of the fire, officials confirmed that someone had left the building when it started, but it was unclear how that person was connected to the fire. The chapel and dorms, two interconnected parts of the complex, were severely damaged by the fire, and officials said that part was probably completely destroyed. Eventually, the flames were put out without spreading to neighboring residential areas or brush. There were no reports of serious injuries.

Speaking with those who grew up near the school gives me the impression that it was more than just a structure. In the comments section of the local coverage, one person mentioned several generations of their family who were involved: a daughter who graduated as valedictorian, a sister who taught there, and a mother who studied there. For a school that has been in operation for more than ten decades, that is not an unusual tale. During a period when Catholic-run Indian boarding schools held a very painful and contentious place in American history, St. Catherine’s served Indigenous students, many of whom were from communities throughout the Southwest. The school was a part of a larger system that was criticized for isolating kids from their families, cultures, and languages; the US has recently started to formally address this history.

The significance of the campus to certain families is not diminished by this complexity. It also doesn’t make the criticism go away. For a very long time, both have coexisted. This tension was evident in some of the comments made by locals following Thursday’s fire; some expressed grief, while others expressed something more akin to relief. There’s a chance that no one response could capture everything the building stood for.

In the midst of a city that has debated its future for more than 25 years, what’s left is a partially destroyed campus. The fire reduced the options rather than providing a solution to the land’s future. Without the structure that used to make the decision so challenging, Santa Fe will have to make a decision about whatever comes next—a cemetery extension, a redevelopment, a memorial, or something completely different. Over Griffin Street, the smoke has subsided. The discussion hasn’t.