Most days just happen. Some days, we learn something interesting. In Denver, Wednesday was a day with more profundity, pathos and plot twists than a Hollywood thriller.
I work in the Colorado State Capitol, where Dec. 3 was the day of remembrance for the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre. The unprovoked attack on Nov. 29, 1864, was perpetrated by Colorado cavalrymen against peaceful Arapaho and Cheyenne bands camped on the plains of eastern Colorado Territory. The merciless slaughter and mutilation of about 200 American Indians is arguably the worst single incident in the long, sad history of the U.S. government’s mistreatment of the first Americans.
Nov. 29 was a week ago Saturday, but the Capitol observed the anniversary four days later because that’s how long it takes the Native Americans participating in the Healing Run to reach Denver from the massacre site 180 miles away, near Eads.
This was the 16th year of the Healing Run. But no one had announced beforehand that this 150th anniversary would be the first time, ever, that the state of Colorado made an official apology for the massacre.
“We should not be afraid to criticize and condemn that which is inexcusable, so I am here to offer something that has been a long time coming,” Gov. John Hickenlooper told the 500 Arapaho and Cheyenne and their supporters gathered on the West Steps. “On behalf of the good, peaceful, loving people of Colorado, I want to say we are sorry for the atrocity that our government and its agents visited upon your ancestors.”
Members of the audience wept. Until that moment I had never guessed how important it was that this apology be made, nor fully appreciated the healing power of the words, “I’m sorry.”
This was not even the first Aha! moment of the day. Before the governor’s speech, I had watched as a thousand exuberant students from East High School came off Colfax Avenue, rounded the northwest corner of the Capitol and literally ran into the solemn, mostly older Arapaho and Cheyenne who had gathered.
The teenagers had not come out for the Sand Creek commemoration. They were protesting the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the failure of a grand jury to indict the officer.
The protesters quickly grasped the situation and listened respectfully around the fringes of the Native American gathering.
I had never imagined a link between Sand Creek and Ferguson. But it dawned on me, and on others at the Capitol, that the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” chant of the Ferguson protesters was the same message conveyed 150 years earlier by the “peace chiefs” and their followers at Sand Creek.
While the Sand Creek memorial continued, the students marched down to the Civic Center and onto the 16th Street Mall. As the students headed back to East, the march took a grisly turn when four police officers were struck by a motorist. Screenwriters would be hard-pressed to match the irony of police officers being injured while protecting people who were protesting the action of another police officer. We held our breath while we waited for information about the motivation of the driver. But it seems the motorist was simply a person experiencing a medical emergency. Those who fixated on this accident, and anyone who argues that the East High School kids caused it, have missed the other lessons that were offered to us on Wednesday.
And while all these events were unfolding on Colfax and downtown and the West Steps, inside the Capitol were members of the Colorado National Guard, whose Missouri counterparts tried to contain the outpouring of anger over the Ferguson grand jury’s decision.
The Colorado guardsmen and guardswomen weren’t preparing to defend the Capitol from rioters. They were decorating the state Christmas tree with the names of the Coloradans killed in military service since 9/11.
Dean Toda is the communications director in the majority office of the state House of Representatives.
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