People of the Sacred Land Screening

The Aurora Public Library did a screening of this film with a Q&A session with its creators. The film talked about the recent (last few years) research that shows that no treaty was signed to take the land rights away from the Natives that called a huge chunk of Colorado home. In the past talk of stolen land has been about the abuse of treaties, but in this case it was truly stolen because the treaty was only signed by the Natives and not by a representative of the US government. Much of the related harm was done by Evans (yes that is the same guy who had both a mountain and a street named after him). This movie looks at some of the research done by one of its creators, Richard Williams. The research all started when he wanted to dig into his own family's past and stumbled upon a footnote in a book that led him to find out about just had bad stolen land can be. You can find more out about his research and the movie at: https://www.peopleofthesacredland.org

During the Q&A one of the things I found interesting was that Williams said that History Colorado (to today) has not been willing to do a screening of this film because it does not support the current historical narrative that History Colorado is pushing. One person in the audience said that they had been a member of History Colorado and would try to speak to some of the people they knew there to try and help. I made sure to remind everyone at the screening that many of the museums in Colorado are not supporting Native history as they should. I also reminded people to not let die the conversation around the Denver Museum of Nature and Science closing their Native exhibit against the want of the community and told people in the audience that they needed help hold the Denver Museum accountable for their actions. 

Boulder Valley School District just announced that they would be adding this film to their curriculum. I also hope that they can get it on PBS to help spread its reach. Even though the film doesn't go into the small details of the research, which personally I wish it would have but I'm also a research nerd, it still gave enough to get key points across. This film also has room to be expanded into a longer documentary.

Below are pictures of the info boards that Williams made to help show/talk about the research he found.