Ways for FLC students to engage in reconciliation
The FYL course will help first-year students connect to their new home at FLC and successfully navigate the first year of college. There are many topics to choose from because our faculty and staff have designed these half-semester, one-credit courses around topics they're interested in and passionate about. As part of the First-Year Launch course, students will learn about the history of the Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School and current Reconciliation efforts here at FLC.
This is included in Launch because we want students to join our community in a shared understanding of this history.
Current opportunities
The Department of Reconciliation will launch an inaugural Indigenous Policy Institute in Spring 2026. The institute will use a cohort model and feature speakers, workshops, and training. We plan to bring in Indigenous policy leaders from academia, local/regional/federal government, tribal governments, and non-governmental advocacy organizations to teach students about advocacy at all levels.
Students will select a policy issue they care about, conduct research on the issue, then present on that issue at the Colorado state capital or other relevant policy venues to advocate for change in areas they care about. Students will be able to build relationships with policy leaders who have experience in Indigenous policy development, advocacy, research, and leadership.
Please be on the lookout for speaker events in Spring 2026.
Apply to the Indigenous Policy Institute
For true institutional change, FLC must evaluate and review existing institutional policies through a reconciliation lens. Since Fall 2025 the Department of Reconciliation has started an advisory group of students to review institutional policies and procedures and make recommendations on existing and new institutional policies related to reconciliation. This Advisory Group will contribute to cultural change and experience hands-on learning for internal policy change.
Membership in this group is refreshed on a yearly basis.
Apply to the Reconciliation & Policy Advisory Group
The Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College is pleased to present Constellations of Place, a major exhibition rooted in the landscapes and layered histories of Southwest Colorado. Guest curated by scholar, writer, and independent curator Dr. Meranda Roberts (Yerington Paiute, Chicana), Constellations of Place will feature a selection of over 60 textiles, pottery, beadwork, 2D works, and mixed media from the Center’s museum and archival collections alongside the work of 13 invited contemporary Native American, Indigenous, and Latinx artists.
Constellations of Place is a collaborative project between the Center of Southwest Studies, Department of Reconciliation, and Four Corners Bridging Institute at Fort Lewis College, and the result of over a year of planning, listening sessions, and research.
Constellations of Place is made possible with generous support from the Belonging Colorado initiative of The Denver Foundation and the Greater Good Science Center.
The exhibition engages with Fort Lewis College’s broader reconciliation initiatives by honoring Indigenous knowledge, memory, and presence. It acknowledges the enduring impacts of settler colonialism and invites viewers to reckon with these histories. In doing so, it affirms the shared responsibility of reconciliation that calls for truth-telling, relationship-building, and collective transformation.
Learn more at the Center for Southwest Studies