{"id":18365,"date":"2025-08-01T21:31:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T21:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-receives-1-million-grant-for-reconciliation-work\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:03:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:03:30","slug":"fort-lewis-college-receives-1-million-grant-for-reconciliation-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-receives-1-million-grant-for-reconciliation-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Lewis College receives $1 million grant for reconciliation work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Fort
Fort Lewis College received a $1 million grant to staff and fund a new Reconcilation Center. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file).<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Fort Lewis College was recently awarded a $1 million grant to fund the college\u2019s reconciliation center, a campus resource that seeks to build on the school\u2019s years of efforts to reconcile its past as an Indian boarding school and years of systemic violence against Native Americans.<\/p>\n

According to a news release from FLC, the grant comes from the Wake Forest University Educating Character Initiative. The grant marries the college\u2019s reconciliation efforts with the idea of character education, which seeks to celebrate diversity and teach students and faculty how to work cross-culturally, both inside and out of college, Associate Professor of political science Paul DeBell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe view this as very widely construed work,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is an opportunity to bridge differences and to pragmatically solve problems where there are really tricky issues and different perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeBell, who cosponsored the reconciliation center initiative, said one of the most important parts of the center will be the ability to weave character education into the fabric of the campus, particularly in decision-making and curriculum. He said the center\u2019s main goals are to boost diversity on campus, self-esteem in students and dialogue from multicultural perspectives into discussions around campus.<\/p>\n

DeBell said the reconciliation center will not be a physical building, but will be a new department in FLC\u2019s division of Diversity Affairs. The money will be used to hire staff members and conduct the center\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt joins a growing ecosystem of reconciliation initiatives at FLC, including Tribal Nation Building, Indigenous language reclamation and culturally responsive health and wellness efforts,\u201d the release said.<\/p>\n

DeBell said the center will also put more emphasis on Indigenous perspectives regarding STEM, ethics and restorative justice measures. That, in turn, will further the college\u2019s efforts to reconcile the institution\u2019s damaging past as an Indian boarding school, in which those perspectives and identities were violently stripped from students who were often forced to go to the school.<\/p>\n

DeBell said this is a chance to bring students together, who will then take that into the broader world outside college.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an opportunity for all of our students,\u201d DeBell said. \u201cI think part of having good character is being honest with ourselves and being open minded to learning from different perspectives. That\u2019s how we hope to model the center \u2013 not isolating any one group, but rather saying all of us have the opportunity to improve our character.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said in recent years, the college has been putting more emphasis on rewriting its history to be more inclusive of the perspective of Native peoples. In 2021, the college removed a series of plaques on the campus clock tower that presented an inaccurate account of the Indian boarding school. Since then, he said, the school has been working to further those efforts, with the reconciliation center being its latest step.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us are part of this history, and by being honest and also compassionate with each other during this process, we can build more understanding and connection in our present for a better and more unified future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The release said the center will formally launch in the fall, with staffing and planning work already underway.<\/p>\n

This article has been corrected to say that the Reconciliation Center is a new department in the division of FLC\u2019s Diversity Affairs. <\/em><\/p>\n

sedmondson@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

center will further college\u2019s goal of remediating damage from its history as an Indian boarding school<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[132,28,198,1097],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-18365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-headlines","tag-history","tag-indigenous-people"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20548,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18365\/revisions\/20548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18365"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=18365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}