By Shannon Lukens.
Members of the Ute Tribe from the Uintah and Ouray Reservations performed Wednesday in Steamboat Springs, as guests of the Tread of Pioneers Museum. They also performed at local schools on Thursday.
Reffel Kanip is half Northern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute from Fort Duchesne, Utah.
“If everybody could understand one another, understand their ancient ways and be good with each other, they could put the earth back on its original axis. Right now, the weather is going crazy and stuff. Maybe God, the creators, and Mother Earth is not agreeing with it, so if we are all together as one nation and one person we can all just come together and put everything aside and just naturally put the earth back to where it is supposed to be and go from there.”
Kanip said the Bear Dance is a traditional dance for the Ute people, and very special to the Utes here in the White River Territory. He said it is the oldest dance in Colorado and Utah. The music of the sticks in the dance represents thunder and lightning. The men prepare the Bear Dance Corral. The women prepare the family’s clothes for the Bear Dance. A woman asks a man to dance and it cannot be a relative.
Southern Ute Indian Tribe Bear Dance
Bear Dance video from Steamboat Springs High School
The women at the presentation told about their outfits and how they are earned and gifted. When regalia is handed down, it is meant for good medicine. One said her dress belonged to her mom. “She is proud to see me dance in it.”
The Ute Indians were the original native inhabitants of the Yampa Valley. They were forced to leave after the Meeker Incident in 1879, when Indian Agent Nathan Meeker attempted to force the Utes to change their traditional ways of life. It was the most violent time in the Ute-White relations and “It became the catalyst for the Utes’ expulsion from Colorado.” ColoradoEncyclopedia.org says newspapers labeled it a “massacre,” and ignored the circumstances that provoked the revolt.
At the end of the evening, Kanip said, “Thank you to the white people. You are doing a good job taking care of the White River Territory. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
He closed with, “Everything that you saw here, take it home with you in a good way.”
