{"id":44725,"date":"2021-09-13T16:23:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-13T22:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-removes-panels-depicting-incomplete-history-of-native-american-boarding-school\/"},"modified":"2021-09-13T22:23:00","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T22:23:00","slug":"fort-lewis-college-removes-panels-depicting-incomplete-history-of-native-american-boarding-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-removes-panels-depicting-incomplete-history-of-native-american-boarding-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Lewis College removes panels depicting \u2018incomplete\u2019 history of Native American boarding school"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Panels
Panels depicting former Native American boarding school life, at the clocktower on the Fort Lewis College campus, were removed Sept. 6 after the school\u2019s History Committee found them to be \u201cinaccurate and disrespectful.\u201d FLC leaders say the boarding school sought to \u201cdisrupt the identity of thousands of children and erase Indigenous cultures and languages.\u201d (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The origin of Fort Lewis College in Durango is a dark stain on American education and the state of Colorado. The school\u2019s own leaders have said as much.<\/p>\n

Once a post-Civil War army post, the Old Fort land in Hesperus was converted into a federal, off-reservation Native American boarding school, which forced tribal students to abandon their cultural identities and adopt western culture. The campus was situated on ancestral land stolen from several Native American tribes.<\/p>\n

The process was often violent. And while there is no current evidence that Fort Lewis had a direct role in student deaths, mass unmarked graves of Indigenous children have been found at former boarding schools across the continent.<\/p>\n

Forced assimilation continued at the school for 20 years, until the land was transferred to the state in 1911 to become a university. The deal was made on the grounds that Native American students would get free tuition.<\/p>\n

Panels in the middle of FLC\u2019s campus, right underneath its iconic clocktower, are supposed to depict this history, but the version on display is incomplete. While they include its time as a Native American boarding school, it portrays the time as peaceful and unproblematic. Photos show Indigenous students participating in sports and the marching band.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe school received high praise for its \u2018extremely good literary instruction\u2019 and its \u2018excellent work\u2019 in all industrial departments,\u201d one panel said.<\/p>\n

But, according to the school\u2019s own Center of Southwest Studies, all aspects of the students\u2019 Native culture, \u201cspoken, written, even gestured,\u201d were strictly forbidden. Records show some students burned down barracks as an act of rebellion against the school.<\/p>\n

\"Three
Three panels depicting former Native American boarding school life, at the clocktower on the Fort Lewis College campus, were removed Sept. 6 after the school\u2019s History Committee found them to be \u201cinaccurate and disrespectful.\u201d FLC leaders say the boarding school sought to \u201cdisrupt the identity of thousands of children and erase Indigenous cultures and languages.\u201d (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

These days, a third of the college\u2019s population is Indigenous, with 170 tribal nations represented on campus. Indigenous students, activists and leaders have pointed out the panels\u2019 whitewashing of history for years. Last week, the pieces finally came down.<\/p>\n

In a ceremony attended by students, tribal leaders and university officials, FLC President Tom Stritikus described the college\u2019s past as part of a \u201ccultural genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the ceremony mourned the college\u2019s past, leaders described it as the beginning of a healing period.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, as we move forward, we can do better,\u201d said Melvin J. Baker, chairman of Southern Ute Indian Tribe. \u201cWe can always be better tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skyhawk Nation, a drumming group made up of Indigenous students, played music during the removal. First was a grieving song, which the group sang in the Ponca language to memorialize the students taken from their homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s talking to Osages, it\u2019s saying all you Osage, look at your children,\u201d said Noah Shadlow, the group\u2019s leader. \u201cIt\u2019s not just look at them, it\u2019s take care of their every need, watch over them, protect them from all harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lee
Lee Bits\u00f3\u00ed, a Navajo citizen and associate vice president of student affairs at Fort Lewis College, sings a Native American intertribal song with a student-led drumming group. (Paolo Zialcita\/CPR News)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Shadlow and company followed that with a victory song and an intertribal song to celebrate the removal of the panels.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look at it as the day of a celebration, like correcting the record, I would say,\u201d he said. \u201cMaking sure that we all know that this history is real and that it affected real people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The college says it hopes to continue its commitment to Indigenous students by accurately retelling its history and expanding its curriculum to reflect the diverse makeup of its students.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have a student who will be working with those panels to tell the history of the boarding school in a more accurate way involving Native American students and non-Native American students,\u201d Stritikus said. \u201cWe\u2019ll continue to do curricular work. We\u2019ve been recently supported by a large grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to build a curriculum around the boarding school, to do historical work around the issues related to boarding schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, FLC will remove the remaining nine panels underneath the clocktower and display them at the Center of Southwest Studies. The college\u2019s History Committee hasn\u2019t decided what to do with the space left behind, but members say they won\u2019t move forward without student input.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thought is to create some panels, possibly with Indigenous artwork or additional information that we can provide for guests and visitors,\u201d Lee Bits\u00f3\u00ed, a Navajo citizen, said.<\/p>\n

Colorado as a whole has been taking steps to address the systemic oppression of Native Americans within the state. In August, Gov. Jared Polis officially ended proclamations that incited the Sand Creek Massacre. But the state still has not made good on its promise to rename Mount Evans and other landmarks named after figures who used their power to oppress Native Americans.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ceremony, school president described FLC\u2019s past as part of a \u2018cultural genocide\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2007,155,132,28,561,2229],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-44725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-culture-general","tag-education","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-headlines","tag-native-american","tag-old-fort-lewis-campus"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44725","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=44725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44725"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=44725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}