9 NOVEMBER 27-DECEMBER 3, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | Call Elaine Lustig, PhD .......................................................... at 303-369-7770 Needing Your Emotional ....... Animal W/ You? For eligible people who need their emotional support animal to accompany them at/or away from home, I am available to provide the documentation and counseling. CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED bassy is loosely modeled on the smaller, four- acre First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, which exhibits art and artifacts from the state’s 39 tribes, it also has restaurants and event spaces. The much larger 26-acre Alaska Native Heritage Center, which has of- fi ces, galleries, Indigenous gardens, a theater and preserved land, also helped infl uence Denver’s current concept, Gilmore says. Once she learned that people wanted the cultural embassy in her district, Gilmore says she championed getting the project included in Johnston’s Vibrant Bond pro- posal; she told Native American communi- ties that would be the best way to move the concept forward Johnston and a committee selected proj- ects for Vibrant Denver bond funding based on surveys of residents, community meetings and input from city agencies. Gilmore says supporters “coordinated” an effort to write the cultural embassy onto as many of the surveys as possible. The American Indian Cultural Embassy isn’t the only Denver effort to honor Native American communities and their history. In March, Denver City Council changed Indigenous People’s Day from a commemo- rative holiday to a designated one, giving city employees a paid day off on the second Monday of October. On October 6, the council agreed to name a park in Gilmore’s district Amache Prowers Park, after the notable advocate, teacher and Sand Creek Massacre survivor. According to the city, it will be the fi rst urban park in the country named after a Native American woman. Denver has already started working on the Living Land Project at City Park, an effort to restore the land to the way it was before European settlement. The $1.5 million project will convert a meadow and picnic area in City Park into a “more naturalized” grassland, gathering area and “healing pond” that grows herbs used by Indigenous tribes for medicine. Gilmore credits the fi ve other Latinas on Denver City Council – Serena Gonzales- Gutierrez, Jamie Torres, Amanda Sandoval, Diana Romero Campbell and Flor Alvidrez – with helping push recent efforts to elevate the area’s Indigenous culture and history. Some of Gilmore’s ancestors lived in New Mexico before U.S. expansion. “We know it’s a real intertwined history of Mexican, Indigenous and others’ culture and history, especially if you’re from New Mexico or Colorado,” Gilmore says. “I think we’re fi nally walking our talk and putting money towards this community.” “When it comes to honoring Indians, there’s nothing really here that does that in Denver,” Williams says, adding that recent council efforts could refl ect a commitment to changing that. “I hope so, I really hope so,” he adds. “Even little projects can make us feel good, make us feel like they’re not still trying to exterminate us or send us to boarding schools or steal our land because of the sad history of Colorado.” Email the author at [email protected]. News continued from page 8
