New mural in Colorado addresses violence against Indigenous women, girls, and Two Spirit individuals
On a hot summer morning, in a parking lot near the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, several vehicles have a common Colorado bumper sticker: an image of a Colorado license plate, proclaiming, in capital letters, “NATIVE.”
The stickers imply superiority for those who were born in Colorado, opposed to transplants from out-of-state.
But to literal Native peoples of Indigenous descent, non-Native settlers are all relative newcomers. What is now Colorado Springs was once inhabited, or frequented, by nearly fifty Native tribes that had trade and cultural ties to the area for hundreds to thousands of years before colonization.
The stickers imply superiority for those who were born in Colorado, opposed to transplants from out-of-state.
But to literal Native peoples of Indigenous descent, non-Native settlers are all relative newcomers. What is now Colorado Springs was once inhabited, or frequented, by nearly fifty Native tribes that had trade and cultural ties to the area for hundreds to thousands of years before colonization.
