By Susan Montoya Bran, The Associated Press ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Friday formally declared “squaw” a derogatory term and said she is taking steps to remove it from federal government use and to replace other derogatory place names. Haaland is ordering a federal panel tasked with naming geographic places to […]
American Indian
Posted inNews
Tribes’ ancestral remains return home from Finland to Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Tribal leaders have reburied the remains of their ancestors that were taken more than a century ago from what’s now a national park in Colorado. A Swedish researcher unearthed the remains of about 20 people and more than two dozen funerary objects from southwestern Colorado in 1891. They eventually became part of […]
Posted inEducation, News
Two northern Colorado schools retire their Native American mascots
LOVELAND — Two Loveland schools are retiring their Native American mascots after years of community debate and a petition by high school students to remove images they consider racist and demeaning to the Native American community. The Thompson School District Board of Education voted unanimously last week to retire the Loveland High School Indian mascot […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, Culture
Ute tribes reimagine Bear Dances, a key ceremony of renewal, as coronavirus locks down Colorado reservations
In normal, non-pandemic times, this is the season when the thrumming notes of a ceremonial song, the rasping of metal sticks rubbed on notched wood and the swinging and flicking of colorful fringed shawls would be kicking off the annual Bear Dances on Colorado’s American Indian reservations. Groups of dancers would sway back and forth, […]
Posted inSunLit, SunLit Interviews
Writing “Bitterroot” allowed author to add humanity to data from her previous work on transracial adoption
Susan Devan Harness (Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes) is a writer, lecturer, and oral historian, and has been a research associate for the Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research at Colorado State University. She is also the author of “Mixing Cultural Identities Through Transracial Adoption: Outcomes of the Indian Adoption Project (1958–1967).” The following is an interview […]