RRB’s Land Group collaborates with Indigenous peoples to broaden their access to lands in the Boulder Valley, ensure their input on city, county, and private land use and development decisions, and welcome their presence in their Boulder Valley homelands.
Criteria for Land Group
* Does this project support Indigenous peoples’ presence, access, ownership and/or influence on land in the Boulder Valley?
* Does this project support requests made by Indigenous peoples?
* Does this project provide means to build relationships between Indigenous peoples and Boulder Valley’s current population?
* Is this project within the capacity of the Land Group to carry out?
Land Group Specific Goals:
The Fort Chambers site in Boulder is developed and managed with the guidance and direction of Arapaho and Cheyenne nations as a place of honest reckoning with Boulder’s history and a place to practice right relationship with Indigenous
peoples today.
Work collaboratively with OSMP for targeted invitations and programming to Indigenous People for the Junior Rangers, Youth Naturalist Programs in cooperation with OYATE (UCB undergraduate Indigenous student group) and local Indigenous People (People of the Sacred Land).
Work collaboratively with OSMP, NIST/NOAA/federal government, local residents, National Forest for Indigenous access (both tribal and local) to land for gathering of Native plants for food, medicine, sacred ceremonies.
Work collaboratively with OSMP on opportunities for tribes with whom the City/County of Boulder have Memoranda of Understanding to provide the people of Boulder with information about their tribes culture, language, history, and other information through audio/visual information on OSMP trails.
Land Group Contact
Contact Christine Yoshinaga-Itano at Christie.Yoshi@colorado.edu
Projects currently in progress…
Cheyenne & Arapaho Culture Enrichment Experience ~ June 24 – 30
Request for Financial Support:
The Land Group with RRB at the request of the Southern Cheyenne & Arapaho tribes are preparing for a Culture Enrichment Encampment that will provide an experience for as many as 25 Arapaho and 25 Cheyenne youth with 10 elders to learn about setting up camp and living in their homeland, Boulder.
This experience is being coordinated with the Denver Indian Center, Broomfield Sister Cities Project, AIYLI American Indian Youth Leadership Institute, OYATE – CU undergraduate American Indian group, local American Indian elders, Indigenous Allies, the Museum of Boulder, and Historic Boulder.
The experience will provide youth with ancestral knowledge about identifying and cutting down trees for teepee poles, setting up camp, eating traditional foods (buffalo) and native plants, observing the evening sky and identifying Arapaho/Cheyenne constellations, hearing their ancestral stories, learning plains Indian sign language, shooting with bow and arrow, making arrowheads, identifying chert and obsidian, learning names of geographical landmarks, learning about mammals, birds, reptiles, insects about their medical knowledge and sacred ceremonies.
Did you know that Boulder is called the land where the buffalo roam in the mountains?
If local youth participate there may be as many as 70 youth who will benefit from this experience. Equipment for the camping experience, housing, food, travel expenses as well as honoraria for the elders will be needed. Additionally, we hope to record some stories, history, language, music, drumming, so that we can begin to put together an audio tour that will teach the people of Boulder and Colorado about the Arapaho/Cheyenne and other tribes who call Boulder and Colorado home. We are beginning with the Southern Arapaho/Cheyenne. We anticipate that the cost of this year’s program will be about $50,000 if we buy all of the equipment this year. We also anticipate that what we purchase can be used by both the tribes and the local Indigenous population.
Contact Indigenous organizations – begin in Fall of each year with information about the program
Boulder County Summer Youth Corps opportunities
Contact: Natasha Steinmann ~ OSMP
Fort Chambers Presentations
Contact: Paula Palmer – Chair
Gathering Group
* Partnership With Wildland Restoration Volunteers
* Wind River Reservation in Wyoming – Grow Your Own
* Chokecherry gathering 2022-2023 (Housing, transportation costs)
* Lifetime permits OSMP
* Flatirons Foodshed Partnership Invitation (Andy Beiter)
Sacred Sites
Historic Boulder, Dharma Gardens, Longmont Property – Conservation Easement, City Council, OSMP, Valmont Buttes, Haystack Mountain, Oldman Mountain – Overlap with Gathering Group
Interest in Land Reparations
We do not have an active subgroup working on rent because People of the Sacred Lands – all local Indigenous Group are taking the lead on issues related to Land Reparations and we are responding to their requests for support.
They have been pursuing tax on all real estate transactions and have sponsors in the Senate and House. It has run into some complications because of the need to identify recipient of funding. Rick Williams is in conversation with tribes and are working on identifying tribes who ratified treaties but this also has problems. Other identified tribes – currently 48 tribes – is based on identification of burial sites in Colorado.