Rick Williams believes that truth, when faced together, can help repair and reconcile what history divided. Through his platform People of the Sacred Land (PSL, est. 2022), Williams—an Oglala Lakota citizen with Cheyenne ancestry—is helping Coloradans restore Indigenous memory to public life, bridging past harm with a new sense of shared possibility.
Until a few years ago, Williams knew little about his family’s regional history. What he did know, however, was that a great-great-grandfather, White Horse, had been a Northern Cheyenne Dog Soldier—a fierce warrior and leader. But as Williams began to probe this past more deeply, what had started as an inspired journey into his family ancestry began to uncover some disturbing details. It didn’t take Williams long to recognize that in unearthing his family’s stories, he was also uncovering a buried record of Colorado’s forgotten past.
Rick Williams. Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
Williams didn’t have to venture far to make this discovery. During research one day in 2019 in his in own home library, Williams learned that Colorado’s territorial government of the early 1860s had issued a set of shocking proclamations authorizing the perpetration of violence against Indigenous peoples. With extra digging, Williams was stunned to learn that well over half a century later, the “Evans Proclamations” (named after a Civil War era territorial governor) had never been officially repealed.
“I was mad that those laws were still in place,” Williams recently stated from his Colorado home. After tirelessly writing state officials and the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs, Williams was finally successful in seeing the laws rescinded when, in the late summer of 2021, Governor Jared Polis signed executive orders to that effect on the steps of the State Capitol.
But Williams’s original discovery had already sparked a deeper question: What other parts of Colorado’s Indigenous history may have been ignored or erased?
“So, I started doing more research,” Williams recalls, adding “A bunch of us got together and talked about it. We decided to create People of the Sacred Land.”
While Colorado is home to the ancestral lands of nearly 50 tribal nations, Williams’s non-profit advocacy platform serves to expose how these same lands, occupied and cared for by Indigenous peoples for more than half a millennium, were taken by force through violent seizure, the brazen disregard of treaties, and other such tactics. After identifying and thoroughly researching such injustices, PSL sets out to explore and facilitate how societal reconciliation and repair might look today.
A history of violence against Indigenous peoples is a formidable legacy. One of the most disturbing examples is the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, when US troops murdered approximately 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people (many were women and children). Williams discovered that the Evans Proclamations had laid the groundwork for that atrocity, following what had been the forcible relocation of Native peoples to reserves like Sand Creek.
Today PSL works with tribal communities to make this history more accessible after generations of silence have obscured our understanding of Sand Creek and similar tragedies. This is urgent work: Williams maintains that despite a 1998 state law requiring that all high school students learn about Colorado’s tribal histories, most students don’t.
To bridge that gap, PSL has developed a curriculum spanning the third grade through middle school, one carefully aligned with state education standards. In times characterized by a backlash against diversity and inclusion initiatives, Williams believes that such initiatives are more vital than ever.
The Impact of the Truth, Restoration and Education Report
PSL’s work goes well beyond Colorado classrooms. In 2024, after two years of collaborative research with the state, PSL released the final installment in a series of “Truth, Restoration, and Education” reports, The Legal and Political History of Colorado Tribes, which details the enduring impact of colonization and genocide on the state’s Indigenous nations. More than a record of harm, the report is a roadmap for justice and restoration, outlining pathways for co-management of public lands, increased tribal presence in decision-making, and the return of stolen lands to their rightful owners.
The seeds of that rebuilding are already visible. Just last year, the City of Denver renamed a municipal recreation center after tribal activist Amache Prowers, a Sand Creek massacre survivor. The state legislature also passed the Protect Wild Bison bill, recognizing buffalo managed by tribes as protected wildlife.
Williams points out that a new “Vibrant Denver” bond proposal was approved by Colorado voters in November 2025, which calls for the allocation of $950 million for public projects—including a $20 million investment to create a cultural center and embassy for tribal nations.
“The cultural center will help us create a physical foothold in Denver,” Williams says, “where we can maintain offices, host events, and begin to exert our treaty rights more directly.”
