Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsA poster preserved in Rick Williams’s office depicts “Tasunka Witko (Crazy Horse) The Man, The Myth, The Legend” from Camp Robinson. Crazy Horse was fatally wounded at fort in 1877 after surrendering to American soldiers.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsRick Williams holds one of the hundreds of books about American Indian history in his collection at his Broomfield, Colorado, home office.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsRick Williams’s Broomfield, Colorado, home office Oct. 15, 2024, which doubles as a library dense with tribal history texts and documents.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsSurrounded by Colorado and regional tribal leaders, Gov. Jared Polis in 2021 rescinds two proclamations signed by former Gov. John Evans in 1864 that Polis said targeted and provoked violence against Indigenous peoples, and led to the 1864 San Creek Massacre.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsLand Back movement supporters hold up a banner as Gov. Jared Polis signs two executive orders on the steps of the state Capitol 2021, to rescind two proclamations signed by former Gov. John Evans in 1864 that Polis said targeted and provoked violence against Indigenous peoples, and led to the 1864 San Creek Massacre.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsA faint rainbow appears as buffalo graze at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, with Commerce City’s Tower Landfill in the background, June, 2025. To Rick Williams, the giant, lumbering beast native to Colorado is the most important creature in Indigenous history and its future. He says, “When the buffalo do well, we will do well.”
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsBuffalo await auction at the National Western Stock Show, January 2025. Around 60 million of the beasts once roamed North America, but they were systematically killed off in the late 19th Century by the U.S. government and white colonizers to deal a blow to American Indians, and make way for cows.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsJake Cook, an interpretative manager at Bent's Old Fort. Established in 1833, it was like a 19th century Tower of Babel — French Canadians, French Creoles, eastern settlers, Spanish speakers from the south all mixed here. So did tribes – who became part of the international trade.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsBent’s Old Fort National Historic Site. In its day, the fort offered a place for tribes to trade for food, hard goods, horses and more. But to buy those, they needed to tap into their own resource — the buffalo.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsBent’s Old Fort National Historic Site was once the center of diplomacy in Colorado’s Wild West, about 200 miles southeast of Denver. And it sits along the Sante Fe Trail, which became a major trade route for Colorado.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsAfter the 60 million buffalo in North America were nearly slaughtered to extinction, a small number became property of the City of Denver, first living at the Denver Zoo, then at two separate city parks, including Buffalo Herd Nature Preserve just off Interstate 70 near Genesee, where this direct descendent of the original Plains herds feeds in February 2024
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsThe Gold Rush prompted many fortune seekers to ignore treaties limiting settlement in tribal areas, including into the Tensile Range above Breckenridge, Colorado.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsThe historic and partially reconstructed flume on a cliff above the Dolores River once carried water to placer gold miner sluices east of Bedrock, Colorado. The Gold Rush prompted many fortune seekers to ignore treaties limiting settlement in tribal areas.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsThe abandoned remains of the Sunnyside Mill in the old townsite of Eureka, up the Animas River from Silverton in the San Juan Mountains. Completed in 1918, the it closed in 1941, and most of it was sold for scrap. The Gold Rush prompted many fortune seekers to ignore treaties limiting settlement in tribal areas.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsBarbed wire traps a tumbleweed in the scrappy drylands above the Arkansas River Valley, near where the U.S. government gathered leaders of the Southern Cheyenne and the Arapaho tribes to get the Fort Wise Treaty finalized - a treaty that Rick Williams and others say was not legitimate.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsRodeo night in the Arkansas River Valley town of Rocky Ford, at the Arkansas Valley Fair. Not far from here, in Lamar, the U.S. government gathered leaders of the Southern Cheyenne and the Arapaho tribes to get the Fort Wise Treaty finalized - a treaty that Rick Williams and others say was not legitimate.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsBeads, necklaces, bracelets and pieces of fabric blow in a cold inter wind at the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. The fence denotes a memorial ground to the Cheyenne and Arapaho who were killed there. The mementos are left by family and other relatives.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsThe long walk from the visitor center out to the overlook at the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. Signs here outline a brutal hour-by-hour account of one of the darkest moments of Colorado history.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsThe overlook at Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site on Colorado’s Eastern Plains. Col. John Chivington and his soldiers spent hours slaughtering and mutilating hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho women, children and elders who had gathered to seek peace with the settlers. The actual massacre site, in the distance, is not open to the public and is considered sacred ground.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsFred Mosqueda, who works for the Cheyenne-Arapahoe government, performs a land blessing on a site in Denver, November 2024.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsA home in Boulder County known as the Cottonwood House, and the land on which it stands, is where Fred Mosqueda is planning for Indian people to manage buffalo herds, just like they used to.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsWith Longs Peak in the background, Boulder County Commissioner Marta Loachamin stands in a Cottonwood House meadow that could become farmland and housing leased to the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Tribe of Oklahoma.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsPaula Palmer, who with Jerilyn Decoteau, led the founding of Right Relationship Boulder in 2016.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsFall clouds over the Flatirons on Colorado’s Front Range in Boulder County. Being able to lease land for a buffalo herd there “would be like coming home,” Fred Mosqueda says. “Our ancestral home is here.”
Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsRick Williams, outside his Broomfield, Colorado, home. ““For the first time in my life, I've seen positive things happening for Indian people, and that is a real joy for me,” he says.
