Three panels depicting former Indian boarding school life, at the clock tower on the Fort Lewis College campus in Durango, were removed last week after the schoolâs History Committee found them to be âinaccurate and disrespectful.â School leaders said the boarding school sought to âdisrupt the identity of thousands of children and erase Indigenous cultures and languages.â Photo courtesy Colorado Public Radio
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College removes ‘whitewashed’ Indigenous displays
Paolo Zialcita
Colorado Public Radio
The origin of Fort Lewis College in Durango is a dark stain on American education and the state of Colorado. The school’s own leaders have said as much.
Once a post-Civil War army post, the land 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.
The proces...
