Native iconography is present everywhere in daily life, including in Colorado. Take places like “Arapahoe Basin” or “Pagosa Springs,” for example. But at the same time, American Indian and Alaska Native people make up a small percentage of the nation’s population.
Get top headlines and KUNC reporting directly to your mailbox each week when you subscribe to In The NoCo.
A traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street and the National Museum of the American Indian aims to dive into those two ideas. Americans opens at the Breckenridge Welcome Center Museum this weekend, and it looks at the impact that American Indians have had on the nation’s history and identity.
“The DNA of our country is so influenced by Native people and traditions and cultures,” said Larissa O’Neil, the museum’s executive director. “I don't think it's something that we necessarily are that observant of in general. So this exhibit really asks us to take a look at how this part of our country's background is all around us.”
The exhibit features replicas of photographs, videos and objects with American Indian images or names – like a Jeep Cherokee toy car, or the former Land O’ Lakes butter logo. Among these objects are deeper histories of events like Thanksgiving, the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Trail of Tears.
O’Neil said she enjoyed learning more about the history of Pocahontas.
“I grew up in the era when Pocahontas was a Disney movie, and that was my understanding of her story,” she said. “It's so fascinating that she was such a big part of some major events and alliances…but she also only sat for one portrait. She left no words ever recorded, and she died really young. She was only 22."
While this is a nationally-focused exhibit, there’s an opportunity to reflect on how Colorado fits into the bigger narrative.
“We certainly have these events of, you know, forced relocation, and it was because of gold and mineral discovery here in the area,” she said. “It was sort of like similar things that and Battle of Little Bighorn were kind of that same westward expansion, kind of, 'We need to make room for what we want, and there's no room for Native people.' And I think that that's something that certainly is part of our local story too."
In addition, the museum will host Mark Wing, a Ute Mountain Ute elder, to share his perspective on the exhibit and his own personal stories on Thursday, January 22.
“I think that's going to be a really powerful way to connect the exhibit too, kind of more local relevance,” O’Neil said. “How does he see things maybe somewhat differently, and also, what is the significance of this area from the Ute perspective?”
O’Neil hopes that visitors will reflect on the town’s local Indigenous history.
“People think of Breckenridge as a mining town. They think of Breckenridge as a ski town, and they don't think of it as much else other than those two things historically,” she said. “For us, it's an opportunity to start to connect the dots on this really rich and vibrant history that goes back thousands of years, with the Ute people who had this land as their ancestral homelands.”
Four other Colorado museums were also selected to host the exhibit, including the Overland Trail Museum in Sterling and the White River Museum in Meeker. It will continue to travel to small towns across the country for the next six years.
It’s on display for free in Breckenridge through mid-March.
