The Colorado Indigenous Peoples Day Pow Wow is an annual event in Boulder, CO creating space for Indigenous people to thrive in community and solidarity together. The Colorado Indigenous Peoples Day Organization grew out of the Boulder Valley Indigenous Peoples Day Organizing Committee, and we seek to work in partnership with other Native-led organizations across so-called Colorado to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day and help sustain the movement for Indigenous Peoples Day.

In 2017, the Boulder Valley Indigenous Peoples Day Organizing Committee was formed, the pow wow planned, and despite the cold, sleet and occasional snow, more than 3000 spectators joined dancers from the occupied Native territories currently known as Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Colorado’s Front Range in a culturally appropriate celebration of Indigenous culture. Indigenous relatives and non-Indigenous community members from the region came together, celebrating the diversity of Native culture, language, and community that has existed upon this stolen land for millennia.

We work together with our partners to build spaces that not only uplift the voices of Indigenous people still living here in Colorado, but that also celebrate and honor the languages and cultures Indigenous to the Boulder area and the entire state of Colorado. We occupy Nuuchu, Heévâhetaneo’o, Hinono’eiteen, and Oceti Sakowin territory, and Southeastern Colorado is the site of the Sand Creek Massacre. We must honor those we’ve lost, celebrate the cultures and languages we have held onto as well as our ongoing relationship with these lands, and advocate for justice and fair treatment of the 60,000+ Indigenous people still living here in Colorado.