Pioneer Day 2022
Another surreal soak for the history books from our latest Soundbath Concert Series with Mountain Tribe this past weekend.
While it's pretty hard not to be present in a moment like this, as a group, we felt the need to kick things off with some hard HISTORY and a footstep toward the FUTURE.
For those who dip up here from Utah, last weekend was a State holiday known as "Pioneer Day." For many, it's a commemorative day of pioneering hustle rooted in a faith-filled nod toward the role of Mormon settlers at the heart of this region's contemporary development.
For others, it's a classic State party embodied with fireworks, parades, and all-you-can-eat "Pie" and "Beer."
Both are true.
But so is this.
20 miles downriver, over 400 Shoshone—largely women and children—were massacred one early Jan morning in 1863. Known as the Bear River Massacre, this atrocity was a direct response to that pioneering settlement in the Cache Valley and beyond.
It was one of the thousands of Indigenous losses at the wheel of the ever-pressing forward handcart in the West.
To celebrate the success of the early Pioneers is also to pay respect to the devastation of Native communities.
Hard HISTORY.
So should we ignore the pioneers and instead diffuse tension with pie and beer?
That may work to numb our history, but it will not work to find a stronger future that avoids the mistakes of our faith-filled past.
So what's our role in thoughtfully bridging the past, present, and future? Our sense is we must take note of all of our histories and become RADICAL PIONEERS that ELEVATE INDIGENOUS WISDOM to steward our region moving forward.
Right now, our Great Salt Lake is drying up. We are over-growing, under-managing, and recklessly wasting our most precious resource... WATER.
If unchecked, we, the current posterity of both tribes and pioneers, will have created one of the largest environmental collapses in our Nation.
So, we gathered in song to celebrate, mourn, and level up. To honor the Shoshone, to awaken awareness of our Salty Lake, and to become RADICAL PIONEERS for our future.
Learn more from Darren Parry, and help Save Our Great Salt Lake.