Comments from Iayana - What Happened, How Did We Get Here

Posted on behalf of Iayana:

"First -- i think Ava Hamilton's question at Ernest's excellent workshop (Thank You, City ) deserves full focused consideration and deliberation. I know this is hard to hear. She asked why a healing trail would be designed to be at the Fort. A multitude of Indigenous people, including many who unlike Ava are not direct descendents of Leaders massacred in 1864, have explicitly stated their wish to not go near the Fort Chambers site where people trained to kill their relatives.

It seems impractical to have the place where men trained for the massacre serve as a place of both education and "healing." The education - the historical facts - is traumatising. One cannot be traumatised, reflect, and heal in the same moment. And one cannot "heal" in a real way unless dealing with actuality. If a Healing Trail were elsewhere on a beautiful Valley spot, settler and Original Inhabitant descendants might both eventually walk there - maybe.

It seems important to have a full educational, revelatory and perhaps corrective experience at Fort Chambers, but this may not be the spot for a healing trail. This really has to be honestly deliberated by all parties involved.

Things I think should be at Fort Chambers that i don't see much of around me yet: You are probably up on all these but here goes:

1. John Evans/(Territorial government involvement):

a) In 2022 before the October Re-membering at the Dairy, there was a state archive website with language literally describing Evans in terms of "Glory". This should be in a display educating people about the accepted patterns of earlier settler society; as with the marker at the Fort that Fred says to put back but with corrections also shown, this record should be kept, and at the same time corrected. Today i found a more recent entry that is at best ambiguous about Evans. This should also be revised. You will know these records much better than i.

b) Caroline Goodwin's poem "I Will Not Say", that she read at the Re-membering, should have a special PLAQUE, with her identity as Evans' great-great granddaughter and the signatories other family members highlighted. She has just confirmed her pleasure and approval re. this submittal suggestion.

c) Denver University John Evans Study Committee Report full text. https://www.du.edu/news/john-evans-study-committee-report

2. County Involvement per se:

I have not seen a statement from the County acknowledging its historical involvement in the massacre. I was not an official historian for the Re-membering, and it was only AFTER the event that i found out on the Carnegie website that George W. Chambers was a COUNTY COMMISSIONER at the time of the massacre!!! Not a random farmer as I had been told : ). This is highly significant. Today on state archives I found more crucial names. Nichols was the County Sherrif and stepped down to be in the regiment. All this governmental involvement needs to be clearly covered at the site.

3. Morse Coffin's published letter excerpt: Attached is the excerpt I sent Katie last year. It gives a clear image of attitudinal societal norms at the time of SCM.

4. Maybe even include the rough tape of the Re-membering at the Dairy that is on the City website? But please not until the credit and name-spelling mistakes at the end have been corrected and the Arapaho and Cheyenne translations of the Songs added, which Fred approved. I was in medical extremis when that tape was sent to the City and have not yet been able to get it fixed.

5. Christian Churches input: including the Methodist church whose minister participated in the Christian Lament in the Re-membering. (Chivington being a Methodist pastor). Maybe another crucial one will come forth in the future with a bit more attention.

6. Full text of Soule's and Cramer's letters to Wynkoop.

7. Again, let me iterate the importance of the ironic and seminal connection between the desecration site of Fort Chambers and the sacred site of Valmont Butte...all on historically the same land. The Valmont Butte site has erroneously been seen by some as an Indigenous decisional site - fortunately the EPA is currently recognizing settler responsibility at that site and is demanding coal ash cleanup. Fort Chambers site needs to acknowledge this extraordinary temporal and spatial juxtapostion of genocide and sacred praxis on the landscape.

8. The Founding Peoples of this region need to be acknowledged in City Charter and at the Fort and their story told up to the present, as Paula noted, including the hoped-for imminent return of some descendants. This would include reference to Utes whose presence has been documented up to 1200-2000 years ago."