The way higher education shifted the trajectory of Heather Shotton’s lineage is overwhelming enough to bring her to tears.
Shotton’s grandparents were subjected to federal assimilation attempts as students at Native American boarding schools. Her parents missed the opportunity to attend college.
Three college degrees and 20 years in academia later, Shotton, 49, sits tall and proud as she prepares for her new role as president of Fort Lewis College — a Durango institution in the throes of reconciling its dark past as a federal Indian boarding school with its promising future educating a large Indigenous student population.
Shotton, an enrolled citizen of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes and a descendant of the Kiowa and Cheyenne tribes, is the first Native American to hold the position.
Ernest House Jr., a Ute Mountain Ute Tribe member who just ended his 12-year term on the school’s Board of Trustees by serving on the presidential search committee and voting to hire Shotton, said he believes she is the first Native American president of any higher education institution in Colorado.
Shotton begins her new role July 1.
“I am really reflecting on the shift in one generation of my family,” Shotton said during an interview. “From being a first-generation college student and a descendant of boarding school survivors to my own daughters getting to see their mom as a college president and what it will mean for my own great-grandchildren.
“My story is one of falling in love with higher education as an undergraduate in college and knowing this is the work I wanted to do,” she added. “It is powerful and not lost on me what this means for so many people.”
Dusk falls on the Dale Rea Memorial Clock Tower on Fort Lewis College’s campus in Durango on Sept. 5, 2021. Until a Sept. 6 ceremony when they were removed, plaques attached to the clock tower displayed inaccurate information about Native American boarding schools. (Photo by Rebecca Slezak/The Denver Post)A reflection of the population
Shotton’s background is reflective of the students Fort Lewis serves.
Forty-two percent of the campus’s 3,544 students are the first in their family to attend college and 40% are Native American. The college awards more degrees to Native students than any four-year, baccalaureate-granting institution in the country — about 26% of all degrees awarded.
As part of reconciling its past, Fort Lewis College covers all tuition costs for enrolled citizens or the children of enrolled citizens of an American Indian Tribal Nation or Alaska Native Village recognized by the U.S. government.
Shotton graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Native American studies, a master’s in human relations and a doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies. She worked her way up the academic ranks at small liberal arts colleges and the University of Oklahoma as a Native American studies professor, department chair and director of Indigenous Education Initiatives.
As board president of the National Indian Education Association, she led national advocacy efforts to strengthen educational outcomes for Native communities.
She landed at Fort Lewis College in 2022 as the vice president of diversity affairs. She succeeds Tom Stritikus, who served as Fort Lewis College president for nearly six years before his departure last year to lead Occidental College, a four-year liberal arts school in Los Angeles.
Shotton comes into her role at a tumultuous time for higher education.
A century ago, the federal government forced Native Americans into boarding schools, where children faced neglect, forced labor, sexual abuse and, in some cases, death.
Now, the Trump administration is threatening to withhold federal funding from and conduct investigations into academic institutions with programs supporting diverse students.
“During this time, we are going to have to have leaders in higher education who can remain steadfast in our commitments,” Shotton said. “At Fort Lewis, we have been very clear about what our values are, and we remain committed to our values and we want to make sure that’s reflected in all the work we’re doing. We understand the students we serve — particularly, the diverse backgrounds we come from — and those needs remain. It’s important to have leaders that can demonstrate a commitment to the people at our institutions and do that with care and humanity.”
Shotton was instrumental in crafting the campus’s 2025-2030 strategic plan, which focuses on five pillars: reconciliation, academics, student success, basic needs and community connections.
Through this plan, Shotton said the campus is focused on ensuring all students have access to nutritious food and safe, affordable housing. The campus is zeroing in on workforce development and partnering with tribal nations and the local community. Leaders want to create a culture of academic excellence where the school is the place to be for diverse, rural, in-state students. And Fort Lewis wants to be a trailblazer in reconciliation efforts across the country.
Students and staff at Fort Lewis Indian School near Durango circa 1900. (Courtesy of the Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College)Reconciliation at Fort Lewis coincides with a national movement to reckon with the country’s government-sanctioned cultural genocide of the Native population through boarding schools, which took root in the late 1870s.
The 2021 discovery of 215 unmarked graves by Canada’s Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc First Nation at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia sparked a search among tribes and researchers for marked or unmarked gravesites holding the remains of Indigenous children.
That discovery prompted former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native cabinet member in American history, to launch a full review of this country’s own legacy of Native American boarding schools.
In 2023, Colorado released an in-depth report that pieced together historical records to form the most comprehensive understanding to date of the experiences of Native children forced to attend boarding schools in the state.
Fort Lewis College evolved out of one such federally funded school, transforming from the Fort Lewis Army Post in 1878 to a federal Indian boarding school in 1891 to a high school in 1911 to a four-year college in 1964.
The state’s report on boarding schools identified 31 Native students who died at the Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School and hundreds of people buried in a bygone cemetery at the former Fort Lewis site in nearby Hesperus.
“Through all that work, through the conversations with students and faculty and staff, I don’t think you could have a better next step in reconciliation than having the first enrolled member of a federally recognized Indian tribe become the next president of Fort Lewis College,” House Jr. said.
Young men from different tribes gather to beat on the same drum celebrating the removal of the inaccurate plaques from the clock tower at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado on September 6, 2021. (Photo by Rebecca Slezak/The Denver Post)“Not just in the footnotes anymore”
For years, the college’s leaders — including Shotton — have committed to recognizing their institution’s ugly history and working with Native students, faculty and tribal partners to reconcile the school’s harms and reimagine its future.
Its future looks like senior Selena Gonzales, a Diné member of the Navajo Nation who lovingly refers to Shotton as “auntie” — a term of respect in Native culture.
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When Gonzales was feeling homesick and stressed at college, she struggled to find suitable places around campus where she could turn to cultural healing practices like burning sage or smoking tobacco.
Gonzales brought this concern to Shotton, who listened and helped brainstorm how to make the campus more culturally welcoming. Now, designating Indigenous healing spaces on the Durango campus is written into the college’s strategic plan.
Gonzales hopes to use her majors in criminology and justice, and Native American studies, to bring Indigenous healing methods into rehabilitation and detention centers to better serve Native populations. She’s inspired by Shotton’s leadership.
“She reminds us that we’re never walking by ourselves,” Gonzales said. “We walk with our ancestors behind us and our future generations ahead of us.”
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