Members of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe will gather Aug. 1 at 8 a.m. at the site of the Beaver Creek Massacre 16 miles north of Dolores to give prayers and offerings to the earth, honor hunting rights and memorialize tribal members killed in the massacre for the start of the hunting season.
“There's a lot of history that needs to be brought up not in a political way, not in a dark way, but mainly for education,” Kendreth Wall, the event organizer, said.
Attendees will come together to pray and give offerings to the land marred by drought and wildfire in the hopes of having a successful hunting season.
Five volunteers from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe will hunt one elk each for the ceremony, with meat to be donated to the tribe’s community food pantry. Those from the Ute Mountain Ute tribe interested in participating in the elk hunt can call the Brunot Wildlife Department at 970-993-0140.
The hunt is dedicated to George Wells Jr., the Brunot and Wildlife director who oversaw hunting seasons and provided education to tribal hunters during his 42-year tenure which ended last year.
The Brunot Commission, of which Wall is part of, organizes the hunting schedule and manages wildlife for tribal hunters. It was formed after the Brunot Agreement of 1873, which ceded 3.7 million acres of tribal land in the San Juan Mountains to Colorado but maintained the rights of the Ute tribes to hunt on the land.
“For the native community it's not so much a sport. It's a way of life,” Wall said.
Wall said hunting and Ute culture go “hand in hand” and it’s important to keep that relationship strong.
Historically, the tribe practiced hunting and gathering as a way of sustaining themselves with respect and care for the earth and its resources. Wall said it's important to reinvigorate ancestral practices as the shrinking of and development on native land has decreased hunting opportunities.
“A lot of the land that we do hunt in the Southwest, in Colorado – it's going away. The water is going away. A lot of the animals are going away,” Walls said. “We need to continue to pray about it and speak about and keep it open for discussions because the minute you’re quiet someone's going to build a highway through your hunting grounds or a data center.”
The event is also meant to honor the six tribal members killed by white settlers in the Beaver Creek Massacre of 1885. In June of that year, cattlemen attacked a hunting party camped near the mouth of Beaver Creek after complaints that Utes traveling off the reservation to exercise their hunting rights were stealing or killing cattle.
“I don’t want that kind of history to happen again,” Wall said. “It’s pretty nasty.”
But, he added, it’s important to remember these violent events to prevent them from repeating themselves and to recognize the history that’s shaped the tribe today.
“We don’t know where we’re going until we know where we’ve been,” Wall said.
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