10 DECEMBER 1-7, 2022 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | CALHOUN | LETTERS | CONTENTS | History Colorado declined, and when the History Colorado Center opened on April 28, Collision opened, too. The tribes were not happy. Collision was still fi lled with “errors and omissions,” Fox wrote History Colorado director Ed Nichols that August. “Others reveal shabby research and a shocking lack of curatorial understand- ing of the massacre, the events surrounding it, and its meaning to history.” On behalf of the tribe, he again “respectfully” requested that Collision be closed and that History Colorado “schedule meaningful consulta- tion meetings with the tribes so that we may work together to produce an exhibit that properly interprets Sand Creek and its profound meaning to our tribes, the nation and the world.” Again, History Colorado refused. For nearly a year after Collision opened, the tribal descendants worked behind the scenes, trying to get History Colorado to close the exhibit until it could do enough research to get the story right. The tribes didn’t need to do any research. They knew the story. They’d lived the story. It was their story. February 14, 2013 Having heard about the descen- dants’ concerns, I had gone through Collision several times, experienc- ing the cheesy you-are-there sound effects, seeing the artifacts they said History Colorado did not have permission to show, hearing why this was no inevitable collision, but the result of colonization and conquest. The name added insult to horrifi c injury. “Collision? It’s a massacre,” Norma Gorneau, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek Massacre Descendants Commit- tee who’d learned about the mas- sacre from her great-grandmother, told me. “They’re not even trying to meet us halfway. We had asked them specifi cally to at least make some corrections. We asked them to take it down because it’s supposed to be enter- taining for them, but for us it’s a major incident that was done to us...a major tragedy done to us...and they want to minimize it. When they said that they weren’t going to take it down, it brought up a bunch of angry feelings.” Finally, the descendants were angry enough to allow me to tell their story. I published the fi rst piece in February 2013, ten months after the exhibit had opened. And fi ve months later, it was closed, never to reopen. History Colorado agreed to work on a new exhibit dedicated to the Indigenous inhabitants of the region...after doing the proper consultations. “The important thing is to talk about its meaning, to show the horror of Sand Creek and why it affected the tribes so much, and how it impacted the relationship between the tribes and the government,” said Halaas, the former state historian, who didn’t live to see that exhibit completed. “If History Colo- rado wants to be the sentinel of Colorado history, they have to get it right.” And fi nally, they have. While History Colorado was slowly get- ting it right, others were paying attention to the tribal descendants, too. In March 2014, then-Governor John Hickenlooper — who’d studied the his- tory of Colonel Wynkoop when he was an unemployed geologist deciding what to name the brewery he was opening on Wynkoop Street — appointed a Sand Creek Massacre 150th Anniversary Commission, to guide a proper commemoration of the heinous event. At the conclusion of that year’s healing run, Hickenlooper stood on the steps of the Colorado Capitol, right by the Civil War Monument, and told how Chief White Antelope had stood his ground that day in 1864 and sung the death song: “Nothing lives long...only the earth and the mountains.” He read from Soule’s letters, he talked about the congressional investiga- tions and spoke of the “deep moral failure” of John Evans. “We should not be afraid to criticize and condemn,” he said. And then, “on behalf of the State of Colorado,” he apologized to the tribes. And Hickenlooper went further. He worked with the legislators and the Depart- ment of Education, which oversees History Colorado, to come up with a new structure that cut the board from 34 to nine and would hold those boardmembers accountable for an organization whose budget was even more out of control than its bad publicity. In August 2015, the new board was in...and the director of History Colorado was out, as was the COO who’d been in charge of all the opening exhibits. A new group took over at History Colo- rado, one that slowly, carefully, respectfully worked to mend relationships with the tribal descendants and move the consultations along. Shannon Voirol was the project di- rector and worked with Sam Bock, the lead exhibit developer, and a dedicated staff; they were supported not just by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, but by Jason Hanson, the chief creative offi cer who’d come on after Hickenlooper over- hauled History Colorado, as well as director Steve Turner (promoted from state preserva- tion offi cer) and then Dawn DePrince, who took over after Turner moved on. More action continued at the Capitol, too. A proposal to create a true Sand Creek Massacre monument was proposed, then fast-tracked. During the George Floyd pro- tests, when the Civil War fi gure was toppled, a committee of legislators decided that spot would be appropriate for the Sand Creek memorial, looking out over the land where the tribes were once at home. In August 2021, Governor Jared Polis rescinded the two 1864 proclamations issued by Evans that had led to Sand Creek. The fi rst directed “friendly Indians” to gather at specifi c camps and threatened those who did not comply. The second ordered citizens to “kill and destroy...hostile Indians” and urged them to “take captive, and hold to their own private use and benefi t, all property of said hostile Indians that they may capture, and receive all stolen property recovered from said Indians such reward as may be deemed proper and just therefore.” “We can’t change the past, but we can honor the memories of those we lost by recognizing their sacrifi ce and to do better,” Polis explained. History Colorado continued to do bet- ter, too. Under the new leadership, many of the staffers took tours of the Sand Creek Massacre site, to see how the NPS had gotten it right. The core group working on the exhibit went to the three reservations that the tribal descendants called home, talking to the elders, experiencing their ways of life, and going over every possible detail of the exhibit that would not only replace Collision, but go so much further. It would share the history of these people from long before colonization. It would put their lives in context. It would be in their own words — two versions, one for the Cheyenne, one for the Arapaho. And the words would be available in their own languages. November 19, 2022 Ten days before the 158th an- niversary of the Sand Creek Massa- cre, on November 19, 2022, History Colorado held a special ceremony to mark the opening of its new exhibit, The Sand Creek Massacre: The Betrayal That Changed Cheyenne and Arapaho People Forever. It began, as all offi cial state events have for the past two years, with a land acknowledgment recognizing the Indigenous people who lived on this land now known as Colorado. Then traditional songs and speeches fi lled the atrium, where two tipis stand on the map where the time machines never worked. The day before, the entire History Colo- rado Center had been closed while tribal descendants and other Indigenous people were able to tour the exhibit at their own pace, reading the words that had been ap- proved, and often written, by their own representatives. “We are some of Colorado’s original land keepers, and our link to this place is at the heart of our Arapaho culture,” begins the Arapaho version. “Even though our ances- tors were violently forced to leave after the Sand Creek Massacre, we are still connected to Colorado.” “Before the Sand Creek Massacre, the wealth of our economy, the fi erceness of our protectors, and the power of our traditions made us some of the strongest people of the plains,” says the Cheyenne version. “But the Sand Creek Massacre changed everything. Today, we work to maintain our traditions, our language, and our connection with the land.” The two parallel narratives take the sto- ries of the tribes through the founding of “The Illegal City of Denver” and the “Dis- carded Treaties and Broken Promises” to a visit to the White House made by Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders in 1863. And then their stories converge in a segment on the Sand Creek Massacre as understated as Collision was over the top. But in its simplicity, it is far more terrifying. It is real. There’s more, much more, to the exhibit, which lets viewers choose their own direc- tion from this point — to a quiet contempla- tion area that re-creates dawn on the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site with the understated sound of birds, to a display where you can read the letters of Silas Soule, to a theater where you can choose from dozens of oral histories. Near the end, in “We Are Still Here,” each tribe has a display case fi lled with items that show their lives today, from COVID masks to football helmets of those rare high school teams that have actually asked the tribes if they can use their names for school mas- cots. Norma Gorneau is so pleased with the outcome of the exhibit that she loaned it a ceremonial dress. Some of the exhibit is open-ended. His- tory Colorado is now studying the Indian boarding schools discussed on one panel: “Our people’s traditions were often beaten out of the children, beginning the very mo- ment they arrived at the schools.” There are photos of the Sand Creek Spiritual Healing Run, which wasn’t held this year for the fi rst time in more than two decades, partly so that tribal members could attend the exhibit opening. And in October, the Department of the Interior doubled the size of the national site, which will require more planning and consultations. And still the story continues. Two days before the exhibit opened, the Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board, which had been established by Polis to consider replacing offensive place names, had taken a surprise vote and agreed to change the name of Mount Evans to Mount Blue Sky, pending the approval of the governor and the feds. That idea had fi rst been proposed two years ago with the support of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma. But it does not have the support of the Northern Cheyenne, who say that Blue Sky is part of a secret, sacred ceremony and not an appropriate name for the mountain. One leader told me that, again, they feel like they were not really consulted, not truly heard. Around the corner from the atrium where the opening ceremony was held stands the Civil War Monument soldier, still covered with paint from the protests, on temporary display until he goes to a new home. But plans to put a Sand Creek Memorial in his spot have gotten mired in discussions over design. Nothing lives long...only the earth and the mountains. No matter what they are called. Email the author at patricia.calhoun@ westword.com. Calhoun continued from page 8 Tribal descendants visit the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
