Please, please, please stop calling this a "Healing Trail"

I am a displaced Indigenous woman (Ngaju Dayak from Borneo, adopted as a baby by white Americans, now residing in Louisville with my husband and daughter) in close community with Native people across the Front Range. I don't know a single Native person here who believes anything about this plot to be "healing." To declare this a "Healing Trail," even when addressing non-Native people, feels arrogant and presumptuous on the city's part. Who are you all to tell me what's healing, or where I am personally in that process, or what my experience is walking this plot of land? How does proclaiming a "Healing Trail" gaslight the experience of Native people that you claim to care so deeply about? How does it erase the history of the Sand Creek Massacre and intergenerational trauma that we all carry?

I don't know any Native people who can walk this land without being overwhelmed with trauma. And so the greatest potential I can imagine for this site is that non-Native visitors learn the truth-- that this was a staging ground for the massacre-- and reflect deeply on how they're connected to it. You don't have to be a direct descendant of the volunteer militia men who staged here to have benefited from the events of Sand Creek, and the white supremacy culture that fueled this history and continues to dominate Boulder County today. Perhaps a walk through a REFLECTION TRAIL-- which feels to me like a much more appropriate name-- could help prompt questions like, "Who am I? Where do I come from? How did I get here / What is the truth of my non-Native family's immigration story to this land? Who were my Indigenous ancestors, and what losses have I experienced as a result of colonization? Am I acknowledging those losses? Have I allowed myself to mourn them? What intergenerational trauma do I carry? Where am I willing to break the cycle-- not only for myself, but for my ancestors, children, and future generations, and all my relations surrounding me? What do I need to disrupt in order to fulfill my purpose and responsibilities in this community today?"

As a member of local Native community, I often see white "allies" show up at local, Native-centered events, happy to be appalled at the history of Sand Creek and boarding schools; inspired by Native drumming and dancing; quick to buy beaded earrings at the Native market. These are easy boxes to check, but ONLY checking boxes is performative. It perpetuates the privilege of comfort of being "a good person," but there is no deep reflection or personal accountability in this. I rarely see these "allies" revoking privilege to create more equity and balance in this county. It is hard and daily work to be truly anti-racist. It requires a level of self-awareness and humility that I rarely see in white people here.

This reminds me of the quote by the aboriginal elder Lila Watson: “If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” How are you ensuring that your work is actually honoring the partnerships you're trying to build with Native people here? How will you ensure that this site isn't simply performative, or vindicating white fragility, or celebrating white saviorism-- but truly guides people to do the work in recognition that their liberation is also bound up in the liberation of Native people here, and Indigenous people worldwide?

Words matter. Please, please, please stop calling this a "Healing Trail."