More than 100 years after a painful episode in Ute history, a new augmented reality exhibition charts a path forward.
On Friday, Aug. 29, a crowd of several dozen gathered in Blanding, Utah, for the unveiling of an immersive storytelling experience on the Anikanuche Incarceration of 1923, in turn recognizing a historical tragedy that organizers say has not been formally acknowledged over the past century.
“The past is never really over,” Angelo Baca, director of the XR experience, said to the crowd. “It may have been 100 years ago, but it might as well have been yesterday. Because as native people we’ve been here 1,000 years. A hundred years is nothing.”
The 100 Years of Silence project was facilitated by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in the White Mesa community to provide education on the forced removal of the Allen Canyon Utes from the Bears Ears region. The focus for the exhibit, organizers said, was not just to formally witness history, but also to take a major step toward healing.
In 1923, after tensions boiled over between Ute Natives and settlers in Blanding, San Juan County Sheriff deputies forcibly incarcerated 80 tribal members for six weeks, feeding them with meager scraps and sending many native children off to boarding schools in Towaoc. Two Ute men were also murdered at the time. The Anikanuche band members were among the final wave of Indigenous people in the United States placed onto reservations.
Malcom Lehi, a Ute Mountain Ute Tribal councilman, said that for decades, past leaders of the tribe had wanted an educational outlet for the 1923 event. But it never happened, until today.
“It’s gonna be history-making for us – everyone of us that’s here – because we’ve never seen this before,” Lehi told the crowd.
The project, open Aug. 29 to Aug. 31, coincided with the White Mesa Bear Dance just south of Blanding. Funding came from the Hearthland Foundation as well as the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project.
Carrying around iPads and donning headphones, groups of attendees toured the grounds of the historic bank building in Blanding, where historically derived images appeared on their screens to reveal how the Allen Canyon Utes were forcibly imprisoned behind a barbed-wire stockade the size of a town block.
Virtual renderings and audio components transported attendees, elders and young children alike, back in time to confront the incident. Although organizers acknowledged some bugs present in the XR experience, Aug. 29 was more of a pilot program, they said.
But by the next day, bugs had been smoothed over, Baca said.
A future for the exhibit is still being explored, said Baca, with some possibility that the XR experience could travel to the Ute Indian Museum in Montrose or the Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum in Ignacio, for example.
The work is only beginning, said Deena Ute, program director of A'Nuche, a follow-up organization to 100 Years of Silence.
“When (A’Nuche) is translated, it means ‘the new Ute,’ or ‘the new version,’” Ute said. “All the blood that ran through our ancestors still runs through us, but we have more advancement in technology and advancement in who we are.
The exhibition opened with prayers from leaders of the Ute Mountain Ute, Diné and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints communities before several speakers ascended the steps of the historic bank to help convey the vision of the exhibition and its place in the community.
Speakers returned to a message that although the exhibit addressed the past, the intention was to take a step to heal historical traumas, especially for youth and future generations yet to come. Others pointed out that healing is a shared endeavor of the wider community, not solely reserved for natives.
“What we’re trying to do is promote healing, not just for the Nuchu – the Indian people – but for our non-Indian friends as well,” said Forrest Cuch a past director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs. “We’ve learned that trauma occurs in the oppressor as well as the oppressed.”
“It’s time as a people to say we’re gonna stand up to this,” said Executive Director of Utah Diné Bikéyah Janet Slowman. “We’re gonna help our people to understand this. We’re gonna help our elders to reach back into history and say ‘OK, this is what it may have been, but we’re gonna keep moving forward.’”
