Events - Sand Creek Massacre Foundation

Learn Remember Heal Speaker Series of the Sand Creek Massacre Foundaion

Dr. Henrietta Mann and the Legacy of Sand Creek

We are honored to present an evening with renowned Cheyenne educator and advocate Dr. Henrietta Mann. A descendant from survivors of the Sand Creek Massacre, Dr. Mann will reflect on the lasting effects of this tragic event on Cheyenne women. She will share ideas for how best to educate young people and the general public about this dark history, as well as discuss current efforts to acknowledge the massacre. Join us to listen, reflect, and discuss how we collectively reckon with the past in the present, and for generations to come.

April 24, 2024 6:00-7:30pm
CU Boulder
Eaton Humanities Building 135
Boulder, Colorado

Free Admission

Presented in partnership with Center of the American West, Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, American Indian Law Program, School of Education, and the College of Arts and Sciences Office of JEDI. With additional support from The Marigold Project.

Henrietta Mann is a full-blood Cheyenne and a citizen of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. She is an education leader who has taught at numerous institutions from the University of California, Berkeley, to the University of Montana, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College located on the campus of Southwestern Oklahoma State University, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Montana State University. She holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. She has been awarded the 2021 National Humanities Medal by President Joe Biden, the First American’s Museum Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Native American Finance Officers’ Association Award.
Mann has been a key figure in the development of Native American studies and the growth of tribal colleges and universities. She testified before Congress and has spoken nationally on higher education for Native Americans. She was the first Indian woman to direct Indian education programs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and helped design the Native American studies program for the Haskell Indian Nations University. She was the president of Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College and served for many years on the board of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Speaking Event with Tommy Orange

Tommy Orange is the author of There There, Pulitzer Prize finalist and 2019 American Book Award winner. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.

October 4, 2023 at 3:00 PM
St Catejan’s on Aurora Campus
101 Lawrence Way
Denver, Colorado

Free Admission

Presented in partnership with American Indian Student Services of the University of Colorado at Denver (UCD), the UCD Center for Identity and Inclusion, Metropolitan State University of Denver and Environmental Stewardship of Indigenous Lands at UCD.

Two Afternoons with Dr. Gary L. Roberts

Dr. Gary L. Roberts is Emeritus Professor of History at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. His most recent book is Massacre at Sand Creek: How Methodists Were Involved in an American Tragedy.

Bent's Fort and the Road to Sand Creek

Dr. Roberts follows the path of people and events leading from the renowned multicultural relationships that defined the Bent’s Fort era to the unimaginable tragedy of the Sand Creek Massacre, only two decades later.

July 9, 2022 at 1pm
The Grand Theater of Rocky Ford
405 S Main St
Rocky Ford, Colorado

Free Admission

Sponsored by the Bent’s Fort Chapter of the Santa Fe Trail Association and the Sand Creek Massacre Foundation

The Racial and Cultural Context
of the Sand Creek Massacre – Then and Now

Dr. Roberts will explore how racism and cultural misunderstanding contributed to one of the worst atrocities ever committed by U.S. troops against Native Americans in the history of this country, and how it continues to affect us today.

July 11, 2022 at 1pm
History Colorado Center
1200 N Broadway
Denver, Colorado

Free with Museum Admission

Sponsored by the Sand Creek Massacre Foundation and History Colorado

Dr. Gary L. Roberts, Emeritus Professor of History, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, Tifton, Georgia, has been researching the Sand Creek Massacre since 1963. His Master's thesis, (1967) and his Ph.D. dissertation (1984) were both about Sand Creek. He has published several articles related to Sand Creek. Most recently he authored Massacre at Sand Creek: How Methodists Were Involved in an American Tragedy. He remains actively involved in research for a comprehensive book on the Sand Creek Massacre. Since 1967, Roberts has presented numerous unpublished papers to organizations including the Order of the Indian Wars, History Colorado, the Western History Association, the Tesoro Foundation and the National Museum of the American Indian. Since 1999 he has served as a consultant to the National Park Service for the location and development of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. He has also consulted with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana, and the Northern Arapaho Tribe of Wyoming. From 2013 to 2016 he consulted with the Rocky Mountain Conference of the United Methodist Church on the role Methodists played in the Sand Creek Massacre. In 2016, he authored the report, which was adopted by the Annual Conference and simultaneously published by Abington Press as a book.

Only the Earth and the Mountains
Film Screening and Panel Discussion with the Filmmaker and Guests

March 10, 2022
6:00 pm Mountain Time
Hosted Online via Zoom

Join us for an online screening of the film Only the Earth and the Mountains followed by a panel discussion with filmmaker Elleni Sclavenitis and Conrad Fisher, Dr. Henrietta Mann, and Ryan Ortiz.

“Only the Earth and the Mountains interrogates the narrative of settler colonialism in the American West by white pioneers and its implications to society today by examining the repercussions of the Sand Creek Massacre, in which more than 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho people were murdered by U.S. Cavalry troops on November 29, 1864. In speaking to the survivors’ descendants, it becomes clear that this event is a living, perpetual loss—one that should not be forgotten.” You can learn more about Elleni and her work at www.sclavenitis.com

This event will be moderated by Alexa Roberts, Sand Creek Massacre Foundation Board of Directors.

Learn more about our guests for this panel:

Panelist: Conrad Fisher

A member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe who grew up on the little village of Birney on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, a traditional cultural community. Conrad was the Dean Of Cultural Affair at Chief Dull Knife College for 5 years before joining graduate school at the University of Montana studying cultural resources management. He served as the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for 10 years and is currently serving as a member of the state of Montana Burial Board.
Panelist: Henrietta Mann, Ph.D.

Cheyenne-So’taa’e Name: Ho’e-osta-oo-nah’e “Prayer Cloth Woman” Henrietta Mann is a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes and was the founding President of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College (Retired). She was the first individual to occupy the Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Montana State University, Bozeman, where she is Professor Emerita and was the Special Assistant to the President until 2016. She gained tenure at the University of Montana, Missoula where she taught in Native American Studies for the greater part of twenty-eight years, prior to moving to MSU in 2000. She, also, has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, and Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. In addition, Dr. Mann has served as the Director of the Office of Indian Education Programs/Deputy to the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She, also, was the National Coordinator of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Coalition for the Association on American Indian Affairs. In 1991, Rolling Stone Magazine named Dr. Mann as one of the ten leading professors in the nation. In 2008 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Indian Education Association. The College Board, Native American Student Advocacy Institute presented her with its first Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 and has since created the Dr. Henrietta Mann Leadership award to acknowledge and thank leaders for their advocacy in improving lives within native communities. In 2016 she became one of two Native American scholars ever to be elected to the National Academy of Education. Subsequently in 2018 she was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2017 she received a SPIRIT ALIGNED Legacy Award as a carrier of indigenous community values, memory and wisdom. Dr. Mann holds an Honorary Doctorate in Human Letters from Smith College in Massachusetts.
Panelist: Ryan Ortiz

Ryan is an enrolled member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe (NAT) and an official Northern Arapaho representative to the National Historic Site as sanctioned by Tribal Resolution. As a direct descendant of Chief White Antelope, he has had the honor of working on the Sand Creek NHS project for the Northern Arapaho Tribe for past seven years. Additionally, he is the CEO of ARAPAHO FIRST the NAT's holding company for all of their for-profit business. Ryan has a MBA in Accounting and was the first Non-Governmental employee to obtain the Certified Indian Fiduciary Trust Specialist certificate through the Department of Interior. The Sand Creek Massacre Project is not just part of a job for him, it is a part of his life and is one of his highest priorities. It is a personal effort of his to bridge the generational disconnect that has been created due to the displacement from the Massacre. Ryan always reminds everyone when he talks to them that if our children forget about the Sand Creek Massacre then those soldiers will have succeeded in what they set out to do on November 29, 1864.
Panelist: Elleni Sclavenitis

Elleni Sclavenitis is an artist and filmmaker based in Denver, Colorado. Her work considers the world through the lens of history and explores repressed historical events in order to expose the power structures underlying conceptions of historical truth. Through all of her projects, she aims to show how the past reverberates throughout the present in significant and often unacknowledged ways. She has shown at venues including DOK Leipzig and Kasseler Dokfest in Germany; Schikaneder Kinosaal in Vienna, Austria; REDCAT and The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles; Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, CA; The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC; The Tallgrass Film Festival in Wichita, KS; The Pocahontas Reframed Film Festival at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and the Santa Fe Film Festival, among others. She has worked as a ﬁlm editor in Los Angeles and taught in the art department at Otis College of Design. She received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts.
Moderator: Alexa Roberts, Ph.D.

Alexa Roberts retired from the National Park Service in 2018 after 25 years of service. She has been involved with the Sand Creek Massacre site since 1999 when the first NPS efforts to identify its location began. She worked closely with Cheyenne and Arapaho descendants in the documentation of oral histories about the massacre and was then appointed as the project manager responsible for ensuring that the national historic site was established. Roberts was the park’s first superintendent, a position which she held until her retirement and one that she considers to be one of the greatest honors of her lifetime. After retirement Alexa moved back to reconnect with her New Mexico roots, but remains deeply committed to the enduring legacy of the Sand Creek Massacre in the lives of its descendants and for its relevance to global issues now and in the future.

Dr. Henrietta Mann and the Legacy of Sand Creek

Speaking Event with Tommy Orange

Two Afternoons with Dr. Gary L. Roberts

Bent's Fort and the Road to Sand Creek

The Racial and Cultural Context of the Sand Creek Massacre – Then and Now

Only the Earth and the MountainsFilm Screening and Panel Discussion with the Filmmaker and Guests

The Racial and Cultural Context
of the Sand Creek Massacre – Then and Now

Only the Earth and the Mountains
Film Screening and Panel Discussion with the Filmmaker and Guests