For me, it can be hard to know what stories to tell about the holidays. American holidays, celebrated vibrantly throughout our communities, are often revered as though they are sacred. Yet, many of our holidays are much more complex than they appear on the surface.

The Rekindling Ancestral Memory Circle I co-facilitate with the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries is grounded in a simple truth: what happened to and amongst our European ancestors still matters.

In correspondence with a reader of this website, she asked for clarification on why I support reparations. She also asked why I capitalize “Black” and do not capitalize “white.” This is my response.

For too long, settler colonialism has displaced and erased the First Peoples of this continent. Massacres, stolen land and boarding schools generated severe trauma. There is an ongoing pattern of exploiting sacred sites for corporate profit and renaming these places after European men, some of whom advanced racist ideologies and perpetrated horrific acts. On many occasions, I have heard Indigenous neighbors share that they feel unwelcome, unsafe and invisibilized here in Flagstaff, on their own ancestral land.

How can settlers become good relatives? One way is by following Indigenous leadership to protect the land and waters where we live.

Snowbowl’s new parking lot is now sprawling across 14 acres of the upper end of Hart Prairie. Part of an aspen grove was destroyed to construct this parking lot, and it has already damaged the land irreparably. The footprint of the parking lot reaches to the boundary of the Snowbowl lease area. Furthermore, it appears that effluent runoff from the new construction and the pre-existing lodge is flowing onto Hart Prairie. As you say, it is shocking to see the level of development.