Ute and Latino communities come together outdoors
Ski days begin to address access to heritage, recreation
By Ellen Metrick, Planet Contributor
This year’s Ute, or Indigenous Youth Ski Day, March 30 at Telluride Ski Resort, happens in conjunction with Día de Esquí for the Latino community. Both are about equalizing access to recreation opportunities and a homecoming for Indigenous youth to ancestral lands. This year’s two-day event will begin with a showing of Connor Ryan’s award-winning film “Spirit of the Peaks.”
Organizers of both events were happy for the serendipitous scheduling.
“We couldn’t ask for better timing or a better opportunity to get our communities together in the outdoors,” Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk said. Lopez-Whiteskunk serves on the board of the Telluride Institute, a partner in the Indigenous Ski Day program, and is the cross-culture program manager at Montezuma Land Conservancy. She lives in Towaoc.
This is the first time that the two communities have come together at the resort, but Indigenous Youth Ski Day (Ute Youth Ski Day in the past), has been one way that the Telluride region is working to reconcile the Utes’ loss of ancestral lands.
“This is a great opportunity to bring engagement, relationship building, and introduce our homelands to our youth,” Lopez-Whiteskunk said. “Our youth will get to experience the homecoming that I have experienced in coming to Telluride and this is a form of land back, where we can put our feet down on lands where our ancestors lived their lives, formed physical and spiritual connections.”
Indigenous Youth Ski Day is a collaboration between Telluride Institute, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Southern Ute Tribe, and receives funding from grants, individual donors, Telluride Foundation, TelSki and Mountain Village.
Claudia García Curzio, Wilkinson Public Library’s Latine adult outreach associate, is also happy that the two communities get to spend and evening and day together.
“I was really excited that these two events landed on the same day. We are working together to make this really awesome,” she said.
When García came to Telluride 10 years ago, she experienced exclusion from the skiing realm.
“No one asked me if I was even interested,” she said. “That’s changed somewhat, but my motivation for creating Día de Esquí is from my own lived experience. I want our community members who didn’t have access, who had questions or didn’t even know how to get started, to have this experience because they live here.”
García added that the event is not limited to those in the Latino community.
“Skiing is expensive. The majority of folks who don’t have access are the working class and Latino community.”
There are a few spots left in the group. Those interested can contact García at library.
Día de Esquí is a collaboration between Sheep Mountain Alliance, Telluride Ski Resort and Bootdoctors.
Ryan, a Hunkpapa Lakota and professional skier and filmmaker, is also looking forward to the weekend. He’ll be showing his film on Friday night and joining the youth in their day of skiing.
“I’m excited to be a part of this event and to get involved,” he said. “There aren’t a ton of opportunities where kids from both the Ute Mountain and Southern Ute tribes get out on the land together.”
Ryan’s mission with the film, shot in the San Juan mountains, is about “restoring balance with all inhabitants of these mountains by illuminating the Utes’ culture and traditional knowledge that can benefit everyone in the fight to preserve the land and dissipating snowpack,” according to Protect Our Winters website, which features the film.
The film screening, 5-7 p.m. at Wilkinson Public Library Program Room, is open to all local youth and will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with Lopez-Whiteskunk and Ryan.
For more information on Indigenous Ski Day, visit https://www.tellurideinstitute.org/ute-youth-events/. For more information on Día de Esquí, contact García at the Wilkinson Public Library.
Read the story here.