Indigenous Land Repatriation in an Urban Context: Urban Native Americans’ Recovery of Land in Denver, Colorado and their Land, Local, and Homeland

Abstract

This article examines land repatriation efforts by urban Native Americans in Denver, Colorado, focusing on two initiatives that sought to restore access to their ancestral land. Unlike tribal land claims against the federal government, in these efforts, urban Native communities without a land base negotiated with municipal authorities, state governments, and religious institutions.

The first case concerns the establishment of the Tall Bull Memorial Grounds in Daniels Park. Beginning in 1974, Richard Tallbull(Southern Cheyenne), president of Denver’s oldest Native American organization, the White Buffalo Council of American Indians(WBC), established in 1955 spearheaded efforts to create powwow grounds commemorating the bicentennial of the United States and Colorado’s centennial in 1976. Completed in 1979, the Tall Bull Memorial Grounds are a vital space for local Natives’ cultural, religious, and educational activities. As well as granting local Native Americans exclusive use of the grounds, in 2018, the City of Denver began donating buffaloes raised in Daniels Park to support tribes’ efforts to restore buffalo herds, symbolically addressing historical losses of the land and buffaloes sacred to them.

The second case involves the transfer of ownership of the land and church building from the Lutheran Church to the Four Winds American Indian Council(henceforth, “Four Winds”). Since the mid-1980s, the building served as a social, cultural, and political gathering place for Denver’s Native community. In 2014, Four Winds gained official ownership of the land, which commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre. Over time, the place became a primary center of support for unhoused Native Americans, reflecting the community’s adaptive responses to contemporary challenges.

The COVID-19 pandemic and citywide sweeps of homeless encampments in 2021 disproportionately affected Native populations, forcing many unhoused Natives into precarious conditions. In response, Four Winds provided for assistance to unhoused Native Americans at the “Denver Indigenous Refugee Camp” framing their displacement as homelessness within their own homeland. Community-based provision of necessities and support with healing practices, such as talking circles organized by the Lakota Way Healing Center, were critical support during this crisis.

These cases exemplify how local urban Native Americans have reclaimed access to their ancestral land for social, cultural, and spiritual purposes while confronting ongoing settler-colonialism and underscore commitments by state and local governments, non-Native residents, and institutions to acknowledge historical injustices against indigenous peoples while fostering new relationships with urban Native residents and the tribes once lived in the Denver area and throughout Colorado. The creation of the Tall Bull Memorial Grounds and transfer of the land and church building to Four Winds exemplify indigenous people’s efforts toward decolonization and the recovery of their homeland in a settler-colonial state. These initiatives also demonstrate that urban land repatriation is not merely symbolic but constitutes a vital strategy for cultural survival, social justice, and the reassertion of indigenous presence in a metropolitan context.