The 2022 version of Summer Lunchtime Lecture Series began at the Frisco Historic Park & Museum last week on Wednesday, June 15. It will continue Wednesday, June 22, and run through Aug. 24, educating the.
The Aspen Institute’s Hurst Community Initiative lecture series in partnership with libraries and chambers of commerce throughout the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys continues at 5 p.m. Wednesday with a look at workforce sustainability…
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Skyler Lomahaftewa is a Basalt resident and a member of the Uncompahgre band of the Ute tribe. In the winters, he gives snowboard lessons at Aspen Snowmass and in the summers, he does audio-visual work for events like Food & Wine and the Aspen Ideas Fest.
Every year around this time, Lomahaftewa goes back to the Northern Ute Reservation in Utah, where he grew up, to prepare for the annual Bear Dance. Now he’s trying to bring the spring tradition back to the Roaring Fork Valley.
“I often think about my connection here to this Valley as historical Uncompahgre Ute homelands, and being a Bear Dance chief,” he said. “This is where the Bear Dance was born, in these Rocky Mountains.”
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“I often think about my connection here to this Valley as historical Uncompahgre Ute homelands, and being a bear dance chief,” he said. “This is where the bear dance was born, in these Rocky Mountains.”
Like the bear dance, Lomahaftewa’s family has roots in the Rocky Mountains, but under Governor Pitkin’s orders, the Uncompahgre Ute people were forcibly removed from areas like the Roaring Fork Valley and forced onto reservations around 1880. As far as Lomahaftewa knows, he’s the only Northern Ute tribe member who lives in the Valley, and he’s noticed that a lot of people don’t know much about Ute history or what life is like on the reservations today.