The ideal opportunity to connect a myriad of Colorado indigenous stories and reckon with the past

With the exception of the Ute, Colorado/the Federal Government is neglectful in ever having provided trust land in the form of reservations to the native peoples who historically frequented these lands of CO. There are stories and histories intertwined with native peoples and homesteaders, and yet, even after the Sand Creek Massacre, lands that were given to descendants for reparations, were eventually transferred to whites who married into the families of the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Historic Boggsville in Las Animas is an example of this, but there are many more stories and also many we have never heard because we have not made the effort to build trust and provide authentic avenues for relationships with native peoples. From the naming of peaks such as Mount Blue Sky, which was only renamed from Mount Evans (the CO Governor who sanctioned the massacre) fairly recently, to the fact that Boulder County and its municipalities has only invested in telling the stories of homesteaders and mining history, we have a long road to creating trust and making the space, both literally and figuratively, to bring native voices to the storytelling process, should they desire it. That should be the focus of this effort- we have celebrated the Homesteaders enough. This should be the catalyst for sharing a broader history of land that can only be shared authentically by native people.