Fort Lewis College's five-year strategic plan introduces a comprehensive reconciliation framework designed to confront and heal the institution’s legacy of injustices against Indigenous peoples.
After 10 months of development, Fort Lewis College unveiled its five-year strategic plan for 2025-30. It builds on the goals of the previous plan while increasing its commitment to more effectively serve Indigenous students, who make up 37% of the student body.
The college’s historical role as an Indian boarding school has been extensively investigated, and the school has faced criticism for its lack of transparency regarding its destructive past.
The new strategic plan takes steps to rectify that. One page of the 28-page document is dedicated to acknowledging the college’s past and outlining its priorities for the future, with reconciliation included as one of the five directions the college wants to pursue in coming years.
“In our last plan, reconciliation really wasn't even a thing, and since then it’s become not only a thing, but a tenant of who we are as an institution,” said interim President Steve Schwartz.
In addition to reconciliation, the college wants to focus on academics, ensuring student success, developing connections within the community and expanding resources to better meet the basic needs of the students and faculty.
Fort Lewis College was conceived as an Indian boarding school in 1892. Forcefully removing Indigenous children from their families and sending them away to schools intended to “assimilate” them into mainstream American culture was a common practice of the time that resulted in large-scale eradication of tribal culture, language and identity.
At the Fort Lewis Indian School, located about 20 miles west of Durango in Hesperus, the attempted assimilation methods were harsh. Native students were forced to cut their hair, get rid of their traditional clothes and change their names, as detailed in a 2023 History of Colorado Report.
Selena Gonzalez, a Fort Lewis student and Hozhoni ambassador first attendant, said that for many Indigenous students, attending an institution away from home can cut them off from their tribal culture. She added that the school’s dark history often prompts students to draw parallels between its past and present, making the transition to university even more difficult.
The strategic plan aims to ease the transition, Schwartz said. Not only does the college want to welcome Native students, but it wants to have a campus and educational experience specifically designed to reflect and support their diverse backgrounds and experiences.
To achieve that, the plan calls for the development of healing-centered programs, the addition of designated Indigenous healing spaces and the establishment of a center for Indigenous wellness.
Last year, Fort Lewis introduced a framework to help guide the school’s broader reconciliation efforts, said FLC Vice President of Diversity Affairs Heather Shotton.
The framework identifies four priority areas that FLC can focus on to alleviate the intergenerational impacts of the boarding school system: tribal nation building, language reclamation, Indigenous knowledge and culture, and health and wellness, Shotton said.
Schwartz said that the steering committee reached out to the Ute Mountain Ute and the Southern Ute tribes and had input sessions with their representatives during the planing process.
In fall of 2024, the college invited numerous tribal nations to hear a presentation of the plan and give input. The full Southern Ute Tribal Council and representatives from the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma were present.
School officials were unclear about the specific feedback tribal members contributed and were unable to say if any of the plan was altered in lieu of the input.
As of now, the direct steps required to fulfill the plan’s lofty goals have not been fully developed. Mary Rubadeau, chair of FLC’s Board of Trustees, said action lines and accountability measures will be determined during implementation.
The four other strategic directions include academics, student readiness, basic needs and community connections.
Development of the directions and initiatives was centered around asking what FLC’s identity is and how the school can better live up to that identity, Schwartz said. The steering committee found that a large part of the institution’s identity is that of a rural educator.
Rural colleges serve as economic drivers of the region and often have higher populations of underrepresented students, Schwartz said. Rural students have different needs than students at urban universities, he said.
The strategic plan focuses on addressing those specialized needs through customized academic programs and instructional approaches, while also supporting students in meeting their basic needs to enhance their academic successes.
Carmen Hall, the student representative serving on the steering committee, who is also vice president of the Associated Students of Fort Lewis College, said expanding affordable housing options is a key priority.
“One of our biggest issues with retention on the faculty level and the student level is people cannot afford Durango,” Hall said.
School officials highlighted the plan’s focus on retention of students and faculty, which makes addressing the affordability of housing critical to reaching goals the college has set for itself.
Schwartz said the school is looking to partner with the city and land developers to increase the availability of student housing. The goal is to have housing available to 67% of the student population by 2026, he said.
jbowman@durangoherald.com
