Indigenous Peoples' Day 2024
- Oct 15, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 9
TODAY IS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY!!
Some things, like water, run through us all. They flow long before we take our first step and continue rushing into the future well after we take our last breath.
Some things, like water, become us.
History is one of those things.
Today, HIS STORY is widening to better reflect HER STORY, THEIR STORY, OUR STORY.
Today, we witness the cultural current into which we have all been born. We honor the once wild and free Native lands onto which our forefathers first landed. We respect the ancient truths we’ve been taught to quickly forget.
That a land and people and way of being existed long before ships & guns & stuff. That nations numbering in the hundreds flourished and fought and migrated and hunted and gathered and lived for countless generations back.
That tradition, belief, knowledge and wisdom flourished in our hills before the arrival of commerce & concrete & conquest & chaos.
That stewardship existed before ownership.
That nothing was discovered. Rather, everything forever interrupted. Genocide, relocation, removal, assimilation, Westernization.
Like water flowing, we’re now history in the making. Each day a conversation with the past and a dance with the future. When is the last time, really, that you stopped and took note of the historical waters within which you are swimming.
Every evening, we shift from conversation in the pools to silence after sundown. Equal parts meditation and respect, it’s the embodiment of sitting in stillness, surrounded by the deep past, and, hopefully, pulled to reflect on the sacredness of the present. Ancient waters embody history and around here,
that history is forever woven into the indigenous past of the Shoshone, the Bannock, and yes, the brutal contours of the Bear River Massacre.
The next time you visit our waters and wonder why we observe silence in our pools after sundown, consider this - it’s a rare moment to honor all that came before and take note of our role in all that is yet to come.
You’re soaking in history.
