Longmont City Council adopts land acknowledgment statement about area's Indigenous peoples

Jul. 14—Longmont's City Council took formal note Tuesday night of the Indigenous peoples who originally lived on and shepherded the land the city now occupies.

Councilmembers voted unanimously to adopt an official "land acknowledgment statement" that says: "We acknowledge that Longmont sits on the traditional territory of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute and other Indigenous peoples. We honor the history and the living and spiritual connection that the first peoples have with this land. It is our commitment to face the injustices that happened when the land was taken, and to educate our communities, ourselves and our children to ensure that these injustices do not happen again."

The statement, a slightly reworded version of a draft previously endorsed by Longmont's Museum Advisory Board and its Sustainability Advisory Board, "recognizes and respects Indigenous Peoples as traditional stewards of this land and the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous peoples and their traditional territories," according to a memo to the Council from the city staff and Erik Mason, the Longmont Museum's Curator of History.

"I'm really happy to see this," Councilwoman Polly Christensen said of the land acknowledgment statement. She suggested that as Longmont installs new informational signs at its parks and open space areas, the statement should be displayed on every sign.

Mayor Brian Bagley said approving the statement amounted to sending a message to Indigenous peoples as well as Longmont residents and visitors to the community. But, he asked, if the words in the statement are true, "What are we going to do about it?"

Bagley, who's been working for more than three years on Longmont's pending formal alliance with the Northern Arapaho Wind River Reservation in Wyoming as sister cities, said the community's commitment needs to be "more than just a statement."

He suggested one possibility would be for Longmont residents to provide homes to tribal children attending colleges and universities in the area.

Christensen agreed the Longmont community needs "to do something substantial" for its Wind River Reservation counterparts.

City staff members told the Council that as part of the museum's work on Longmont's 150th anniversary exhibition, Mason explored a land acknowledgment statement on the museum's behalf of the museum. Staff and Mason said land acknowledgments are being adopted as a best practice across sectors, especially among museums and higher education institutions.

In preparing the proposal for a Longmont statement, the museum consulted with Montoya Whiteman, who is Cheyenne and Arapaho — the tribes most closely affiliated with Longmont.

"Whiteman has done a tremendous amount of research on the subject and is working on a similar project with the Denver Art Museum," city staff and Mason said in their memo for Tuesday night's Council meeting. "She brought to our attention that the Denver City Council adopted a land acknowledgment statement that they read before each council meeting. Museum staff then considered the opportunity to expand the conversation beyond the museum and talk about it in terms of the city as a whole."

In October, then-University of Colorado President Mark Kennedy issued a statement that said in part: "As we gather, we honor and acknowledge that the University of Colorado's four campuses are on the traditional territories and ancestral homelands of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute, Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Pueblo and Shoshone nations. Further, we acknowledge the 48 contemporary tribal nations historically tied to the lands that comprise what is now called Colorado."