By Denise Ross
Every Thanksgiving a group of native runners gathers
at a remote spot in southeastern Colorado and prepares
to run nearly 200 miles to downtown Denver. The event
is not a race, brochures and a short film about the run
make clear. It is a prayer.
At sunrise on Thanksgiving morning, spiritual leaders
conduct a pipe ceremony to bless the runners at the site
where dozens of their ancestors were killed in an attack
by the U.S. military in 1864. Sand Creek, which recently
became a national historic site, is a name gaining more
recognition for its place in American and tribal history,
thanks in part to the annual Sand Creek Massacre
Spiritual Healing Run/Walk.
(Read more in the Winter 2010 Issue…) |
|
"It's kind of humbling. There's lots of spirits there,"
Limberhand said of the site in a sea of prairie grass
and sage brush, dotted by a few cottonwoods.
|
