Over three days, the First People's Festival in Estes Park brought together Indigenous artists, dancers, educators, and families for a fashion show, an art market, cultural demonstrations, and a powwow, creating a space for celebration, education, and remembrance.
One of the people behind the festival is Nico Strange Owl, a Northern Cheyenne cultural advocate and artist. Strange Owl is also the owner of Eagle Plume's Trading Post, a longtime Native American art hub near Estes Park.
" That's the most important thing, is that we have a place for Native people to come together and to celebrate our heritage," she said. "And to also educate our history and our current state, how we express ourselves through art, and music, dancing."
For Strange Owl, the festival is about more than just art and culture. It's also about telling stories that have long been left out of history books.
She is a descendant of survivors of the Sand Creek Massacre, one of the deadliest attacks on Native people in U.S. history. It was carried out in southeastern Colorado in 1864 by U.S. troops against Cheyenne and Arapaho families.
"It was sort of covered up for a long time," she said. "People didn't want to talk about it when I was growing up. My grandmother always said that had my great-grandfather not survived as an infant at Sand Creek, none of us would be here."
Strange Owl has worked with the Sand Creek Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to education and remembrance of the massacre.
Elleni Sclavenitis, the foundation's executive director, says one of their main projects is to create the Center for Sand Creek Massacre Studies.
"So that researchers, descendants, academics can come to one place and, you know, look through vetted materials about the massacre, its context, and also its consequences," she said.
The foundation is also raising funds for a public memorial at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver.
"This will be a bronze statue," Sclavenitis said of the proposed memorial. "Chief Black Kettle, who was the Cheyenne chief, Chief Left Hand, who was the Arapaho chief, and a medicine woman holding a baby and a cradle board, and they're standing in front of tipi poles."
The memorial was unanimously approved by the Colorado legislature and the governor's office last spring. Organizers hope to install and dedicate it on November 29th, 2026, on the anniversary of the massacre.
Education was a central focus throughout the festival, including a presentation by Jim Kemp with the Colorado Cherokee Circle.
"I want to dispel the mythology that's surrounding Native American populations and peoples," he said.
Kemp said he speaks at events like this to challenge narratives that still shape how Native history is taught.
" In the Declaration of Independence of the United States, their doctrine is that we were merciless savages, and it's written right into that document," said Kemp.
He told the audience that those myths ignore the complexity and structure of Indigenous societies.
"We understood what it was for us as a people to be owing to our ancestors and fulfill their legacy for us, while at the same time creating a safe legacy for the next seven generations coming after us."
In the adjacent building, dancers, singers, and drummers from across the region gathered for the powwow.
Morning Mist Atz is Cheyenne and Arapaho, who traveled from Lakewood to compete in the teen jingle dance.
" It was a pretty hard competition with four pushups for each sidestep," she said. "The sidestep is pretty hard because you're just going up and down on your tippy toes which is really strenuous on your legs."
The powwow ended with two special dances: a red dress dance and a red shirt dance, honoring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives.
Ahead of the dances, Lynnette Grey Bull addressed the crowd. She is the founder of Not Our Native Daughters.
" We do these specials at powwows, not only to bring awareness, but we want to let our tribal relatives know that they can contact us and we have financial support for families who are facing this issue," she told the crowd.
Grey Bull serves on Colorado's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives task force, and helped create a similar task force in Wyoming.
"We support our relatives facing this situation, and we'll make damn sure that every time this case happens that they pay attention and there is accountability," she said.
As the powwow wound down, dancers, singers, and drummers prepared to return home to Utah, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, and communities across Colorado. They're already looking ahead to the next gathering on the powwow circuit, including the Denver March Powwow, the largest in the state, set for just two months from now.
Copyright 2026 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including KSJD.
