Dancers in feathers and bright teal and pink regalia whirled to the beat of a drum in the center of Boulder High School’s gym as four generations of the Arapaho tribes sang a victory song in their ancestral home.
Hundreds of people gathered Sunday afternoon in the gym to welcome more than 100 members of the Northern and Southern Arapaho tribes back to land they inhabited for generations. In the 1850s, the Arapaho tribes were forced from Boulder Valley by white settlers and sent to reservations in other states.
The day-long celebration of their return was the product of more than a year of collaboration between the tribes, local government officials and local organizations.
It was a bittersweet moment; simultaneously a joyous homecoming and a reminder of past and present trauma.
“We always have a sensation, a feeling, here in this area where our ancestors left their moccasin prints,” said William C’Hair, eagle chair of the Northern Arapaho.
“We can still hear the echoes of the songs of our ancestors in the wind,” he said.
Elders and tribal leaders explained the history of the Arapaho in the Boulder area, where the tribe wintered for hundreds of years until white miners discovered gold in the foothills in the late 1850s and settled there, despite a previous treaty that preserved that land for the tribe. The Arapaho split into two and the approximate 12,000 current members of the tribes now live on reservations in Wyoming and Oklahoma, which they share with other tribes. The Arapaho are the only tribes in the U.S. without a reservation of their own.
Members of Right Relationship Boulder, a volunteer organization working to help Boulder Valley residents learn about native cultures, first reached out to the Arapaho tribes about a year and a half ago, volunteer Paula Palmer said. Three members of the group traveled to the reservations in Wyoming and Oklahoma to meet with tribe members and discuss what kind of relationship the tribes would want with the people now living in their homelands.
“For us, it’s more than just an event,” Palmer said. “It’s relationship building.”
Organizers hope that the celebration Sunday, ahead of Monday’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day, will serve as the beginning of an ongoing relationship between Boulder leaders and the Arapaho. The school district also hopes to collaborate with the Arapaho tribes in improving how the tribes’ history and current culture is taught.
“We noticed that it’s not necessarily the history the people it’s representing want to be told or how they want it to be told,” said Kyle Addington, director of health and culture for the Boulder Valley School District.
There’s still work to be done, said Ava Hamilton, a member of Right Relationship who is Arapaho. In the future, the group and the tribes hope to work with city and county leaders to set land aside for the Arapaho people so that they have a place to stay when they travel through the area and a place to teach their children about their home.
“It’s really important to be able to have a relationship with our home,” Hamilton said.
Many of the members of the tribes said words failed them when trying to describe the feeling of returning home. Despite decades of separation, a special connection with the land and water remains.
“Our houses may be in Wyoming,” said Roy Brown, chairman of the Northern Arapaho Business Council. “But our hearts and our spirits are here. It feels so good to be home.”
