As someone not particularly fond of the last miserable, windy throes of winter, I’ll take any spring ceremony I can get. I need to release my grumbles, need to rev up my energy for all the exploring warmer months will bring. And as someone who is fascinated by bears, particularly the whole wonderful idea of […]
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Posted inCOVID, News
Why are Colorado’s rural counties vaccinating people faster than urban ones?
Across much of the Front Range and Colorado’s other biggest counties, securing a coronavirus vaccine remains an arduous endeavor. Overloaded websites. Lengthy wait lists. Hair-pulling frustration. But, in southwest Colorado, the state’s smallest county has a different problem: It’s run out of people to vaccinate, at least for now. Barely two months after shots started […]
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 inColoradans, Education, News
Colorado boarding school, where government sought to assimilate tribal students, listed as a “most endangered” place
Just outside the southwest Colorado town of Ignacio, on Southern Ute tribal land, remnants of a campus where the federal government carried out its campaign to assimilate American Indian youth and eradicate their culture juts from the landscape. Only a few buildings, a former parade ground and a flagpole still stand, relics of the military-style […]