Ute Land Religion in the American West, 1879-2009

Brandi Denison’s Ute Land Religion in the American West is an engaging study of cultural memory and Indigenous dispossession in Colorado. Intrigued by the “Meeker Massacre Pageant” performed in Meeker, Colorado, Denison sought to understand how the performance originated and what purposes it served for Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants. Her research uncovered a “theology” whereby Colorado’s colonizers sanctified dispossession—a “Ute Land Religion.” Her analysis begins in 1879 when Nathan Meeker, agent at the White River Agency in northwestern Colorado, called for troops following a disagreement. Meeker was killed in the ensuing violence, and several Utes fled the reservation with three white women, which led to the expulsion of the northernmost bands of Utes from Colorado in 1881. Following this ethnic cleansing, white Coloradans “launched a series of remembrances of the Utes, as an effort to coalesce a regional identity for a set of rootless, mostly white people” (4). The commemorations, anchored in an idealized Ute spirituality constructed by non-Utes, culminated in the Smoking River Powwow, a gathering to bring Northern Utes, Forest Service personnel, and local officials into dialogue in order to promote reconciliation. These efforts fell short—the powwow ended after only two years—and Denison argues that the reason for this failure of reconciliation primarily resides in the religious narrative of dispossession non-Utes constructed.Two Ute women stood at the center of that religious vision. Chipeta, wife of Chief Ouray, and She-towitch (aka Susan), his sister, operated as intermediaries in the aftermath of the uprising. Both women were credited with aiding in the rescue of the captive women, and She-towitch allegedly protected the women from rape during their ordeal. Motivated by imperialist nostalgia in the aftermath of removal, Colorado’s boosters utilized the women’s images in literature, art, and festivals, presenting them as mediators between Colorado’s savage past and its bright modern future. Non-Ute Coloradans penned tributes to the Utes’ deep spiritual connection to the Colorado mountains, framing it as a premodern mysticism that represented “the authentic religious expression” of humanity (5). By framing the Utes’ connections to their homelands as purely spiritual, the colonizers could dismiss economic considerations such as hunting rights as trifles. In Ute Land Religion, premodern Indians understood the wealth of the land as spiritual, but modern whites saw the economic values of the land. Utes challenged this interpretation by using their neighbors’ interest in them to lobby for their treaty rights, but the rigid boundaries of essentialism deflected their message before it could penetrate.Denison’s well-researched study makes a welcome addition to the literature on cultural memory and the political uses of commemoration in colonization. As she notes, many laudable scholars of this topic have neglected the significance of religion in shaping national ethnic identities. I leave it to scholars of religion to decide whether the loose collection of ideas on Indian spirituality found in plays, poems, and pageants regarding Indigenous Coloradans constitutes an actual religion, but this bundle of ideas certainly provided white settlers with spiritual sanction for colonialism, even as they sought to “dialogue” and “find healing” with their Indigenous neighbors. Denison argues that such efforts, while sincere, fail because settler society muffles Indigenous voices under layers of suffocating stereotypes. Sadly, Colorado settlers effectively weaponized the deep spiritual connection that the Utes feel for their homelands and used it to dispossess them

American west · Archaeology · Ethnology · Geography · History · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices