Tom Stritikus, a white man from out of state who talks a mile a minute, in the summertime of 2018 took the helm of a rural southern Colorado faculty with a big Native American pupil physique and an institutional historical past of Indigenous oppression and cultural genocide.
It was a nuanced job, with the potential for mistrust and danger of amplifying a extra palatable, revisionist historical past of Fort Lewis School’s previous as an Indian boarding faculty. However Indigenous tribal leaders, college students and employees say Stritikus selected a distinct path.
Beneath Stritikus’s management, Durango’s Fort Lewis School confronted its brutal previous and welcomed a way forward for therapeutic and reconciliation that wasn’t at all times straightforward, however was trustworthy.
“He wasn’t shying away from it though it was such a darkish historical past,” mentioned Ernest Home, a Ute Mountain Ute Tribe member who sits on Fort Lewis’s Board of Trustees. “He needed to make sure to get it proper.”
Now, after almost six years as Fort Lewis School’s president, Stritikus is heading west, the place he’ll function the top of Occidental School, a four-year liberal arts faculty in Los Angeles.
Stritikus, 54, leaves behind a reworked greater training establishment with folks and insurance policies in place to make sure the dedication to acknowledging previous wounds whereas working towards a thriving future continues.
“The reconciliation work we’ve got completed is essentially the most profound and essential work I’ve completed in my skilled profession,” Stritikus mentioned in an interview with JHB final week. “This was us as an establishment having an obligation to inform the reality and work out what that fact meant for our historical past going ahead.”
“He genuinely cares”
Stritikus, the son of Greek immigrants, grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. He was a first-generation faculty pupil who completed highschool simply as his father earned a GED.
The significance of training was at all times drilled into him, Stritikus mentioned.
“It’s type of that immigrant factor,” he mentioned.
Stritikus earned his doctorate on the College of California, Berkeley in language, literacy and tradition. His scholarly work examined the influence of bilingual training coverage and instructor apply on the tutorial lives of Latino and Asian immigrants.
Early in his profession, Stritikus grew to become an educator with Train For America in Baltimore. That have had the younger instructor ruminating about how faculties met the wants of scholars of shade.
“I developed a way of what occurs when faculties don’t rise to the super set of sources that college students ought to have,” Stritikus mentioned. “It put a hearth in my stomach of making an attempt to do the correct factor by college students and having a number of drive to take action as a result of the results of getting that incorrect are fairly grave.”
Stritikus took what he noticed as a instructor and, from 2014 to 2018, utilized it to his work as deputy director of training on the Invoice & Melinda Gates Basis, the place he helped construct a method to enhance training in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Round that point, Home served on the search committee for Fort Lewis’s new president and remembers combing via greater than 100 candidates. He puzzled whether or not this man from Seattle would match nicely in Durango. When he met Stritikus in particular person, Home was impressed by his curiosity within the Indigenous roots of the school.
“What I did know coming in was it felt like Fort Lewis was an important nationwide story that the world didn’t find out about,” Stritikus mentioned.
Earlier than beginning as president in 2018, Stritikus visited the close by Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute tribes to ask how Fort Lewis might be a greater companion.
“I mentioned, ‘Hey, I get you’ve seen this film earlier than,’” Stritikus mentioned. “‘Quick-talking white man is available in, and this film doesn’t end up very nicely for you. However I’m going to return again.’”
Stritikus turned to Home and different Indigenous leaders on campus for recommendation on how greatest to have interaction with the tribes.
“He strikes at one pace, and that’s 100-plus miles an hour,” Home mentioned. “What I used to be at all times a bit bit involved about was, are we going to have the ability to sluggish him down a bit?”
Home, who beforehand served as the chief director for the Colorado Fee of Indian Affairs, suggested Stritikus to be current for conferences with tribal leaders with out sneaking glances at telephones or watches.
“With some nice recommendation from (Dr. Heather Shotten, the college’s vice chairman for variety affairs) and Ernest Home, I used to be capable of present up in these relationships in a manner that was genuine and listen to what they needed to say,” Stritikus mentioned. “This could’t be a one-and-done factor. If I have been giving recommendation to a white chief… you must maintain going again and constructing genuine relationships.”
Stritikus labored on tasks to learn the Native group, together with a program to deal with the scarcity of Indigenous nurses whereas bolstering rural well being care within the 4 Corners area. He abolished administrative parking spots, so when college students complained about having to park distant, he might be a part of them in outrage. He made it a requirement to have a Native American tribal member on the school’s Board of Trustees.
Delving into Fort Lewis’s darkish previous
Stritikus felt mistrust among the many administration and school in the beginning of his tenure. The brand new president sat down with the college and requested for trustworthy suggestions.
A Fort Lewis alum-turned-chemistry-professor, Joslynn Lee, despatched Stritikus an electronic mail about what it meant to be an Indigenous pupil on campus and stroll previous a commemoration to the school’s Indian boarding faculty that glossed over the atrocities and inaccurately portrayed the previous boarding faculty as a “pleased” place.
Lee was the nudge the campus wanted, Stritikus mentioned, to kind a committee to work on analyzing the historical past of the school and transfer towards reconciliation. The exhibit got here down in 2021 in a strong ceremony. Reconciliation work continues.
Not lengthy after, 215 unmarked graves have been found by Canada’s Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc First Nation on the Kamloops Indian Residential Faculty in British Columbia, sparking a search amongst North American tribes and researchers for marked or unmarked gravesites holding the stays of Indigenous youngsters.
That 2021 discovery prompted U.S. Inside Secretary Deb Haaland, the primary Native cupboard member in American historical past, to launch a full evaluation of this nation’s personal legacy of Native American boarding faculties, which forcefully assimilated Indigenous youngsters and stripped them of their tradition.
Fort Lewis, beneath Stritikus’s management, was all in on reviewing its personal legacy.
In October, the school was included in a 139-page report by State Archaeologist Holly Norton and Historical past Colorado that illustrated the experiences of Native youngsters who at occasions have been kidnapped and coerced into faculties like the previous Fort Lewis Indian Boarding Faculty and woefully mistreated.
The analysis, which centered on the years 1880 to 1920, recognized 31 Native college students who died on the Fort Lewis Indian Boarding Faculty. A bygone cemetery on the former Fort Lewis web site in Hesperus is believed to have almost 50 youngsters buried in it, in keeping with an archaeological investigation, with one other 30 to 100 burials, or extra, doubtlessly related to college students on the boarding faculty.
Stritikus mentioned he had a high-level understanding of the historical past of the boarding faculty when he began working at Fort Lewis, however solely after speaking to the group did he learn the way many years of intergenerational trauma have impacted the Native college students and employees on his campus.
The report, he mentioned, was a painful however crucial learn.
Watching the now-thriving Native American inhabitants on Fort Lewis’s campus — accounting for almost 30% of the coed physique — take up the heaviness of that report, Stritikus mentioned, was among the many hardest components of its launch. He and different campus leaders made positive there have been sources for college students processing their ancestors’ trauma.
Stritikus saved exhibiting up — and welcoming others in.
Manuel Coronary heart, chairman of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, mentioned Stritikus at all times invited him to huge occasions on campus and reached out to companion on completely different initiatives. Coronary heart has been to Stritikus’s home and met his household.
“He’s actually open,” Coronary heart mentioned. “He’s trustworthy. We constructed an excellent relationship, and I contemplate him an excellent pal of mine.”
Brittany Bitsilly, who’s Diné from the Navajo Nation, is the coed physique president at Fort Lewis School.
“I do know for a reality he genuinely cares,” Bitsilly mentioned.
How does she know? Nicely, Stritikus has cooked Greek meals for Bitsilly and different pupil authorities leaders in his dwelling together with his household. He exhibits as much as their pupil authorities conferences to hear and pops up at occasions throughout campus. Simply final weekend, Stritikus and Bitsilly ran a campus 5K to honor the lives of kids misplaced within the Indian boarding faculty period.
“He’s in all places,” Bitsilly mentioned. “It’s refreshing to see the chief of a campus who cares this a lot. It means the world.”
“This can be a nice job”
When tribal leaders felt snug sufficient to tease him, Stritikus mentioned, he knew he’d made it.
Not the whole lot was jokes and public appearances, although. When coping with such painful matters, conversations between Stritikus and Indigenous leaders, college students and employees have inevitably turned somber and, at occasions, vital.
It’s essential to Stritikus to take heed to critiques with out leaping to defensiveness. “You understand that regardless of if it stung or not, there’s in all probability a great deal of fact to it,” he mentioned.
Generally, Stritikus mentioned, college students, employees and group members mentioned he wasn’t doing sufficient, quick sufficient, nicely sufficient.
“As leaders, we will and may count on critique on a regular basis,” he mentioned.
Whereas Durango has crammed Stritikus’s cup, he’s a metropolis man at coronary heart and, as his Could departure looms, he seems ahead to working and residing in Los Angeles.
Whoever fills Stritikus’ footwear has a number of listening to do in the event that they plan to succeed, he mentioned.
“My recommendation to the successor is simply go take heed to this group,” Stritikus mentioned. “The Durango group is an unimaginable group. The Southern Ute, Ute Mountain Ute — simply go and sit and take heed to see what they need. Sit and take heed to our college students. They know a lot.”
Bitsilly and different Fort Lewis college students are rooting for a BIPOC president, she mentioned. Chairman Coronary heart mentioned he needs a president who will companion with the tribes authentically.
“I noticed a lot potential at Fort Lewis due to the dedication to school and variety in college students,” Stritikus mentioned. “I additionally realized a number of that potential was not being realized on the time I walked within the door. I’m proud that, over the six years, we began to comprehend quite a lot of that potential. I feel there may be quite a lot of that potential left to actualize at Fort Lewis. This can be a nice job.”
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