Two-day event celebrates Arapaho, Cheyenne Indians

BOULDER – A two-day celebration designed to renew the spirit of friendship between Boulder area residents and the Northern Arapaho Tribe will be held Aug. 7-8 on the downtown Pearl Street Mall as part of Boulder’s yearlong Sesquicentennial Celebration.

“Coming Back Home” will give Boulder citizens an opportunity to demonstrate the friendship that characterized early contacts between the Arapaho tribe and Euro-American gold-seekers.

Bands of the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians lived in Colorado until November 1864 when the Sand Creek Massacre, and its aftermath, drove them from the Territory. Years later, the Northern Arapaho were settled with Eastern Shoshone on what is now the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming.  The Northern Cheyenne were placed on a reservation in Montana, and the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho were removed to Oklahoma.

A variety of activities will mark the celebration, kicking off with the Northern Arapaho members of the Sand Creek Band playing contemporary American Indian country and rock music. The band will perform in the 1300 block of Pearl Street beginning at noon on Friday, Aug. 7, and ending at 1:30 p.m. as part of Downtown Boulder’s “Noon Tunes” series.

On Saturday, Aug. 8, at 11 a.m., Northern and Southern Arapaho tribe members will be welcomed by local officials in front of the Boulder County Courthouse at 13th and Pearl streets, where a color guard will begin the full day of activities, including dancing, drumming, storytelling and booths.

The booths will feature American Indian art, crafts and food, including the popular fry bread.

About 75 members of the Northern Arapaho Tribe are expected to attend the events. Storytelling by Northern Arapaho tribal members, including William C’Hair, Teresa Hughes and Yolanda Hvizdak, will be offered in several teepees in front of the county courthouse lawn during the day Saturday.

Sponsored by Downtown Boulder Inc., the celebration will continue throughout the day until 8 p.m.

Elders of the Northern Arapaho also will be hosted on a tour through Rocky Mountain National Park on Friday, Aug. 7, sponsored by the National Park Service and the CU Center for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the West, led by Professor Andrew Cowell of the Linguistics and French departments at CU-Boulder. The tour leaves for Estes Park at 9 a.m. Friday.

A book written by Professor Cowell in collaboration with Alonzo Moss Sr. of the Northern Arapaho Language and Culture Commission, “The Arapaho Language,” was recently published by the University Press of Colorado.

Prior to the Boulder events, the Northern Arapaho have planned a memorial run from the site of the Sand Creek Massacre. The “Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual Healing Run” is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 6, at the Sand Creek Massacre site in Kiowa County northeast of Eads, Colo. The run will proceed to Limon the afternoon of Aug. 6 and at 9 a.m., Friday Aug. 7, the run will continue from Limon to Bennett, east of Denver.

On Friday afternoon the runners will be taken by van from Bennett to Denver, where they will tour the “Tribal Paths” exhibit at the Colorado History Museum, 1300 Broadway in Denver.

The Healing Run will end with a ceremonial finish in downtown Boulder on Saturday, Aug. 8. The Northern Arapaho and other participants will start at 10 a.m. from Scott Carpenter Park on 30th Street near Arapahoe Avenue, taking the Boulder Creek path into downtown Boulder to join the “Coming Back Home” activities on the Pearl Street Mall. Members of the public are invited to run with Tribal members. Parking is limited; please use public transit or bike to the park.

The run is dedicated to the people who have provided input into the Sand Creek Massacre Project, which began in 1999, when an Act of Congress directed the National Park Service to determine the location and extent of the Sand Creek Massacre site. After eight years of intense historical research, an archeological survey, the collection of oral histories from massacre descendents, and government-to-government consultation with the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes, the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site was dedicated on April 27, 2007.

For more information on the Sand Creek Massacre national historic site, visit the web site at http://www.nps.gov/sand/index.htm.

For more information on the Boulder Sesquicentennial commemorating Boulder’s founding in 1859, go to http://www.Boulder150.com.

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