'This resolution acknowledges us': Fort Collins officially recognizes Indigenous Peoples Day

In Fort Collins, Columbus Day is officially no more.

Fort Collins City Council unanimously voted to recognize the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day in 2022 and beyond in recognition that Fort Collins was originally home to a number of Native tribes and now hosts a diverse urban Native community.

Colorado stopped recognizing Columbus Day in March 2020 when Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill abolishing the holiday. The state replaced it with Francis Xavier Cabrini Day, but the abolishment didn’t apply to local governments, school districts and businesses, which are still able to choose what holiday they recognize.

A resolution to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day was drafted by members of the Fort Collins Native community over recent months, according to Rachael Johnson, the city’s senior equity specialist and a member of the local Native community. Johnson presented the resolution to council on Tuesday.

“It's been a long process of bringing this to fruition,” Johnson said in an interview. “As a community, we do things in a very collective, consensus-driven kind of a way, so that was multiple meetings of going through each piece and making sure that all of the community members who were involved, which was a significant group, were in support.”

A similar resolution was placed on City Council's six-month agenda last year, but the Native community requested it be taken off to allow for "more intentional contribution from the community," said Claudia Menendez, the city’s equity director.

Menendez said the resolution is special in part because the Native community is a political group, so it's a good display of government-to-government relations that "deserves special attention" because of the "truth and reconciliation taking place."

The resolution gives the city the chance to recognize that the city has “benefitted, and continues to benefit, directly from Native American removal policies that violated human rights” by forcing people from their homelands and to recognize “the resilience of Native and Indigenous Peoples despite the harms these systems and policies have caused,” according to the resolution.

More:'Fort Collins didn't begin with Fort Collins': Northern Colorado's Native American history

Johnson told the council that it’s important to recognize all the different subsets of Indigenous people that exist in Fort Collins, ranging from Native Americans who identify as indigenous to this land to tribal citizens, Alaska Natives and more.

Indigenous Peoples Day was first proposed in 1977 and has since been adopted by other Colorado cities like Boulder, Colorado Springs and Denver.

Members of the community in Fort Collins are hopeful the recognition is just the start.

“The impact on this community is already very positive with its passage,” Jan Iron, a member of the Native community and president of the Northern Colorado Intertribal Powwow Association, told the Coloradoan.

“ … This resolution acknowledges us, the proud Native American people of many tribes/nations who have survived every attempt to erase us. I think the passage of this resolution will help promote more unity as we all work together to make Fort Collins the beautiful, inclusive city that we all know it can be.”

Ron Hall, a member of the Native community in town for almost 30 years, said that while having a proclamation of accurate history is good, this issue isn’t one of the past.

“It’s not just history, it’s a daily current presence and challenge for Native people to find community,” he told the Coloradoan. He added that the resolution’s encouragement of “people in the general public … to be aware and learn about that history and to understand the modern presence of native people in Fort Collins” is a good element that can help address that.

Council members had a positive reaction to the resolution, thanking Johnson for her work on it and saying they were excited for what would come before them next.

“I am more than happy to commit the city to what we have outlined in the resolution and continue to explore other recommendations and our commitment,” Mayor pro-tem Emily Francis said.

Larimer County’s Board of Commissioners also passed a resolution honoring Indigenous Peoples Day on the second Monday in October, though the county’s resolution came one day after the holiday this year.

In reading the resolution — which was brought to the county by Jelitza Martinez, outreach coordinator for Larimer County public affairs — Commissioner John Kefalas became choked up several times. Other commissioners spoke to the importance of the resolution, saying it recognized history and committed them to doing better in the future.

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Community says recognition is good but more needs to be done

In addition to recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day and having a reading of the resolution on Tuesday, Johnson presented to the council about the work the city has been doing to rebuild a relationship with the Native community — and what they hope is next.

She said the city has started holding meetings with the Native community to determine their priorities and what they want to see from the city, and the main takeaway from those has been that “the community really needs a community center here specifically for the Native community.”

“This would be a space for gathering, traditional healing and medicine, powwow, a garden focused on sustainable Indigenous art agricultural practices, a space to teach our children and to learn from our elders to provide culture and language classes, to engage in ceremonies and sweat lodges and to celebrate and to invite others to learn,” Johnson said.

In addition to holding meetings, the city is working on land acknowledgment, providing the community space for things like powwows or gardens, keeping the community engaged with discussions around the future of the Hughes Stadium site and coordinating with CSU and Larimer County to be efficient in their efforts.

“There's a lot of momentum right now, so I'm excited and I'm hopeful,” Johnson told the Coloradoan. “The city council that we have right now is very supportive and is very interested in engaging with the community, and that helps so much … I think we have the ability to do really good transformational work.”

Previous reporting:CSU Board of Governors approves sale of Hughes land to Fort Collins for $12.5 million

A previous version of this story attributed a quote to Rob Long instead of Ron Hall. The story has been updated to reflect the correction.

Molly Bohannon covers city government for the Coloradoan. Follow her on Twitter @molboha or contact her at mbohannon@coloradoan.com. Support her work and that of other Coloradoan journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins officially recognizes Indigenous Peoples Day