Wyoming

Opinion: From Colorado lands smeared with my ancestors blood to a Wyoming sacred hot springs stolen from us, the dispossession continues

Published

2 years ago

July 30, 2024

Opinion: From Colorado lands smeared with my ancestors blood to a Wyoming sacred hot springs stolen from us, the dispossession continues

If only the cottonwood trees throughout our sacred homelands — stretching from the Sand Creek Massacre Site to the sacred waters of Hot Springs State Park to the Little Bighorn National Monument, could tell the stories of our peoples.

There is a reason the National Parks Service refers to them as witness trees. This spring when I traveled to the Massacre Site, in what is today called Colorado, to commemorate my Arapaho and Cheyenne ancestors killed there and those who barely escaped with their lives, the cottonwood trees had a ghostly appearance. It sounded like they sang with me as the wind picked up when I prayed there.

From there I traveled north, along the Sand Creek Massacre Trail that my ancestors followed to escape to one of their safe heavens: the sacred source of the hot water at what is now referred to as Hot Springs State Park, in Cheyenne. We call it tsexhoeomotometo mahpe, where the breath of life comes out of the water.

From there, I traveled all the way back to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in what is today called Montana, past the Little Bighorn Battlefield, to the place where our ancestors sundanced to pray for guidance before the battle in 1876.

My journey through the Arapaho and Cheyenne homelands — from Sand Creek, to Hot Springs, to Little Big Horn — marked a trail of dispossession of our peoples.

Petroglyphs are seen on the limestone walls near Thermopolis, Wyo., are about a half hour away from the Hot Springs State Park. (Alisha Bube/Getty Images iStockphoto)

We were effectively driven from the state of Colorado by genocide. A recent study found that the state of Colorado alone benefitted over $1.7 trillion from the dispossession of land of Indigenous Peoples.

The dispossession continues to this day.

The state of Wyoming tried to unilaterally proceed with major changes at what they designated in as Hot Springs State Park. These hot springs have always been sacred to our people, our ancestors went there for healing, including after the Sand Creek Massacre.

But the springs and 100 acres of land surrounding it was taken from the Wind River Reservation
and the compensation was not just nor fair. The federal government turned around and gave the
land to the state since settlers had been pushing into the area.

In a recent letter to me, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon recognized this, he stated: “I fully acknowledge that the trauma of these events strongly impacts Tribal members even now, and that the wounds are still deep and fresh. While it may seem to some that the days of forced relocation and violent conflict are far behind us, that brutal history is all too recent for many, sometimes only removed by one or two generations as noted in your letter.”

He then proceeded to describe what I consider a continuation of the same: the unilateral state decision-making process that started with a Master Plan almost 10 years ago for the development of the springs and continues with the current decisions handing facilities over to out-of-state operators aiming at the further commercialization of our sacred waters.

This does not meet the standards of consultation with Indigenous Peoples necessary under U.S. law, let alone the requirement of prior informed consent of the Arapaho and Cheyenne Peoples under international law, including under the United Nations (U.N.) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that the United States government has committed to implementing.

This single largest source of sacred hot springs in the world is a sacred site to our people. My grandparents and parents taught me to always make offerings there and they took me to the privately owned Star Plunge pool to swim as a child. I have since taken my children and most recently my 3-week-old grandson there to swim at this place that continues to facilitate intergenerational Indigenous and local access, which stands to be forever changed, without our peoples’ necessary input and consent.

The state points to the publicly owned bathhouse, which it considers as a fulfillment of the promise to give the Indigenous Peoples free access, in the past elders and people with disabilities could easily access individual pools there, which is no longer the case, and access is limited to 20 minutes. The waters there are also too hot for little children, so the Star Plunge is the main place where our people have been coming together in 3+ generations for collective healing.

Most recently the local family that has been operating the Star Plunge for three generations and stands to be expropriated organized a free swim for the Northern Arapaho and Cheyenne and more than 700 of our people came and around the beginning of August the Eastern Shoshone will also be joining in. This is an example of benefit-sharing with the main obligations falling to the state. What the state has to understand is that when we as Indigenous Peoples talk about access and benefit-sharing it connects to the requirement of FPIC, which requires dealing with us as decision-makers regarding access to our lands and waters, and the site of Hot Springs State Park.

In order to truly address the intergenerational effects of genocide, access and benefit-sharing regarding the Hot Springs State Park have to be implemented with the Arapaho and Cheyenne people right now.

But the dispossession doesn’t stop at the Wyoming border.

It is important to acknowledge that our people were deliberately targeted by genocidal strategies, first by the U.S. Army and militias like the Colorado volunteers; followed by an even more devious strategy to go after our children, through the so-called boarding school system. It really had nothing to do with education; it exploited our children as forced labor, while assimilating them by literally beating our indigenous languages and ways of thinking out of them.

Many died and were buried on the grounds of these institutions, too often in unmarked graves. The forceful removal of Indigenous children meets the international definition of genocide under Article 2(e) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Hot springs mineral water flows through Hot Springs State Park in Thermopolis, Wyo.. (Melissa Kopka/Getty Images iStockphoto)

In 2020, Colorado lawmakers passed a bill titled “Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Public Schools” (House Bill 1336), which requires completion of such a course as a condition of high school graduation.

Yet the Colorado Boarding School system was not included in this recent statute, not even after the Colorado Legislature commissioned House Bill 1327 and was presented with a study into how these boarding schools were genocidal. What is almost more shocking is that the Sand Creek Massacre is not explicitly listed for study in the bill, although the then-governor of Colorado Hickenlooper presented an official apology on the 150th anniversary which makes it come up on its 10-year mark this year.

Actually, the only two genocides explicitly mentioned are the “holocaust meaning the systemic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews and five million individuals targeted for their religion, disability, or identity by the Nazi Regime” and the Armenian Genocide. As William Zessar, who lost many of his relatives to the Holocaust, and has been advocating to amend the statute said: “To fail to recognize the genocides that happened in the very land where we sought refuge, means to diminish all other genocides.”

As a fellow intergenerational survivor of genocide, I wholeheartedly agree, there can be no competition or for that matter comparison between genocides: We have to condemn them all; they are cumulative on the soul of humanity. What signal does the Colorado legislature send by not explicitly listing the Sand Creek Massacre and the Colorado Boarding School system, when they constitute incidents of genocide in the state?

Some might point to the discretion passed on to the Colorado State Board of Education to set the standards for the teaching of the course and that they can add and for that matter also remove genocides by way of a simple majority vote. They have to date added eight more genocides, among them the Sand Creek Massacre, although it remains the only one among them that does not have educational materials attached to it, that facilitate the teaching of the respective content.

And they have not added the Colorado Indian Boarding School system, contributing to the lack of education on this incident of genocide in the state. There is no doubt that a simple vote at the State Board of Education, does not equal the standard and protection of having incidents of genocide directly listed in the statute, and that is why as a direct descendant of families impacted by the Sand Creek Massacre and the Indian Boarding School system, I urge the amendment of the Colorado Holocaust and Genocide Studies Statute to explicitly list “genocides of Native American Peoples, including the Sand Creek Massacre and the Colorado Indian Boarding School system,” to ensure that they are taught to all students in public high schools.

There is no better way to commemorate the upcoming 160th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, than for legislators to make a commitment to do this. Public education about this topic is key in the lead-up to the 150th anniversary of Colorado becoming a state in two years. I call on the Colorado 150/America 250 Commission to champion this.

In Montana, we will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn at the same time, when our ancestors took a stand for our way of life, which includes our Indigenous languages, way of thinking, our identities and our spiritual connection to the land, all things that the Indian Boarding school system tried to sever.

And 2026 will also mark the 250th anniversary of the creation of the United States, with the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, in Pennsylvania.

Too many U.S. citizens do not know that Pennsylvania hosted a crucial institution in the Indian boarding school system in the United States: The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was set up by the U.S. Army in 1879, within 3 years of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, targeting especially children of leaders of Plains Indian Tribes. While a number of my great-grandparents had been at the Sand Creek Massacre and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, they saw their children, my grandparents, targeted to attend first the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and the next generations Indian Boarding Schools in other states.

The systemic genocidal intent is clear, and as their descendants, we carry the intergenerational effects. Thankfully our Indigenous teachings passed on from generation to generation also carry many counter-remedies that the world needs now more than ever, and we would be ready to share these as part of learning about genocide.

Northern Cheyenne traditional Chief Phillip Whiteman Jr, Heoveve’keso (Yellowbird), comes from long lines of chiefs and works with Indigenous Peoples across North America. He has developed his own teaching model based on ancestral wisdom and his life experience to counter the intergenerational effects of genocide with indigenous teachings. More information can be found at: phillipwhitemanjr.org

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Wyoming

WATCH: Flooding in Wyoming

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8 hours ago

April 1, 2026

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Wyoming

Report: Game & Fish tests 5,370 samples for chronic wasting disease in 2025

Published

20 hours ago

March 31, 2026

Press Room

Report: Game & Fish tests 5,370 samples for chronic wasting disease in 2025

WYOMING — In 2025, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s (WGFD) Wildlife Health Laboratory tested over 5,300 samples from elk, deer and moose for chronic wasting disease (CWD).

WGFD released its 2025 CWD Surveillance Report recently, which stated that the agency tested 5,370 samples, and CWD was detected in 842 of the samples. CWD prevalence averaged 21.6% in hunter-harvested mule deer bucks, up from 19.4% in 2024. The percentage in hunter-harvested white-tailed deer bucks was 32.1% in 2025, an increase from 29.2% in 2024. In hunter-harvested elk, the percentage was 2.4% in 2025, just barely up from 2.3% in 2024. No CWD was detected in moose samples in 2025.

“Wyoming’s CWD surveillance would not be possible without the participation of our hunters,” WGFD Wildlife Health Lab Manager Jessica Jennings said in a statement. “We encourage hunters to check the Game and Fish website for the 2026 priority and mandatory testing areas, check current CWD prevalence on the interactive CWD map and no matter where you hunt, please consider having your animal tested for CWD.”

Last year, CWD was identified in three new deer hunt areas, six new elk hunt areas, and four elk feedgrounds. As of the end of 2025, CWD has been detected in 35 of 37 Wyoming mule deer herds, and in 24 of 34 designated elk herd units.

CWD is a fatal disease of the central nervous system in mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk and moose. According to WGFD, the disorder is caused by abnormally folded proteins called prions. There is no cure for CWD, and there have not been any human cases of CWD, nor any proof that humans can contract the disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization recommend not consuming animals that test positive for CWD. All testing of CWD is free for animals harvested in Wyoming. Read the full report here.

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Wyoming

Opinion | Rolling back roadless protections puts Wyoming’s water at risk

Published

1 day ago

March 31, 2026

Press Room

Opinion | Rolling back roadless protections puts Wyoming’s water at risk

In Wyoming, people don’t need a policy briefing to understand where our water comes from. It starts high in the mountains — snowmelt filtering through forests in places like the Wyoming Range, the Bighorns and the headwaters of the Snake, Green and North Platte rivers.

What happens in those headwaters matters.

For the past 25 years, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has helped protect many of these places by limiting new road construction in the most intact parts of our national forests. It covers nearly 45 million acres nationwide, including large swaths of Wyoming — lands that continue to do the work nature designed them to do.

Now, there’s a renewed push to roll those protections back. That decision shouldn’t be taken lightly. The stakes are close to home: clean drinking water, healthy rivers and the future of hunting and fishing in Wyoming.

Roads may seem harmless. But in backcountry forests, they fundamentally change how watersheds function. Cut into steep terrain, they erode, channel runoff and deliver sediment into streams. They disrupt the natural processes that keep water clean and flows stable.

That has real consequences downstream, as many communities get their drinking water from rivers. More sediment means higher treatment costs for communities and greater stress on water systems. It affects irrigators, municipalities and anyone who depends on reliable, clean water — which in Wyoming is just about everyone.

The same is true for fish.

Healthy trout populations — whether in big rivers or smaller mountain tributaries — depend on cold, clean, connected water. Those conditions are increasingly found in places we’ve disturbed the least. Where road networks expand, that system breaks down: Streams warm, spawning gravels fill with sediment and migration routes are cut off.

Two-thirds of Wyoming’s state-designated “blue ribbon” trout streams have their headwaters protected within roadless areas. It’s no accident that some of Wyoming’s best fisheries are tied to roadless headwaters. These areas act as refuges — places where natural processes still work as they should. For many in Wyoming, that translates directly into opportunity.

Hunting and fishing are not abstract values here. They are part of the economy and Wyoming’s identity. Outfitters, guides and local businesses depend on healthy wildlife populations and intact landscapes. Families depend on them for food, tradition and time together outdoors.

Some 3.3 million acres of nine national forests have been classified as roadless areas since the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. (U.S. Forest Service)

And anyone who has spent time in the Wyoming backcountry knows a simple truth: The further you get from roads, the better the experience tends to be. That doesn’t mean roads have no place. But it does mean we should be thoughtful about where we build more — especially given how many we already have.

The Forest Service already manages an extensive road system and faces a multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog. Many of those roads are deteriorating, contributing sediment to streams and requiring costly repairs. Expanding that system deeper into the backcountry adds long-term liabilities for taxpayers without clear benefits.

It’s also important to be clear about what the roadless rule does and doesn’t do. It does not lock up land or prevent active management. Forest managers can still reduce wildfire risk, improve habitat and carry out restoration projects. Those tools are being used today, including in Wyoming.

What the rule does is draw a common-sense boundary around the most intact landscapes, ensuring they remain largely unfragmented over time. That’s not extreme. It’s practical.

It’s also popular. When the roadless rule was first adopted, more than a million Americans weighed in with overwhelming support for protecting these areas. That kind of broad agreement is rare — especially today.

And it reflects something important: People value clean water, strong fisheries and the ability to hunt, fish and explore public lands without seeing every corner carved up by roads. 

Elected officials should take note. In Wyoming and across the West, voters consistently support responsible stewardship of public lands. They expect decisions that protect the resources communities depend on — not policies that risk long-term damage for short-term gain.

We’ve already seen what happens when road networks expand too far into sensitive landscapes: degraded water quality, declining fisheries and rising costs for land managers and taxpayers alike. The roadless rule was put in place to prevent those outcomes before they occur.

At its core, this isn’t about restricting the use of public lands. It’s about making sure those lands continue to provide what Wyoming depends on: clean water, abundant wildlife and access to the kinds of places that define this state.

Generational investments and smart policy like the roadless rule pay dividends. Keeping Wyoming’s headwaters intact is one of them.

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