In a historic moment for Colorado, lawmakers unanimously approved a memorial sculpture to honor the victims of the Sand Creek Massacre, a tragic event that occurred in 1864. The decision was made on Monday in front of descendants of the massacre survivors at the State Capitol.
“Our hope is that this memorial will be a turning point when Colorado says, ‘We are not afraid to confront our past because we believe in a just and honest future,'” said Sen. Kyle Mullica, a Thornton Democrat and the sponsor of the memorial resolution.
The proposal received bipartisan support, having been co-sponsored in the Senate by Republican Rod Pelton from Cheyenne Wells and by Democratic Rep. Tammy Story and Republican Rep. Ty Winter in the House. Both chambers of the Colorado General Assembly unanimously approved the memorial project.
The memorial will feature a striking 24-foot-tall sculpture depicting an Arapaho chief, a Cheyenne chief, and a Native American woman holding a child.
This sculpture is set to replace a Civil War statue that protesters removed in 2020. The area in front of the iconic Capitol building has remained boarded off since that protest.
The Sand Creek Massacre is often described as one of the darkest moments in Colorado’s history, with U.S. troops brutally killing around 250 Arapaho and Cheyenne civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, near the town of Eads in the eastern plains of Colorado.
Otto Braided Hair, a representative of the Northern Cheyenne and a descendant of Sand Creek Massacre victims, expressed his gratitude during the Senate floor vote on the resolution.
“There’s got to be some kind of acknowledgement. That’s a beginning of the healing,” said Braided Hair.
He recalled a time when his community faced hostility while working to establish the massacre site. Today, with unanimous support from both the House and Senate, Braided Hair feels a sense of progress.
“When we first went to go set up the work on the massacre site, they were unfriendly. Today, the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations are recognized and acknowledged. I’m just beside myself,” he continued.
For decades, descendants of the massacre’s victims have sought to memorialize this tragic chapter in history at the State Capitol. In a statement about the resolution’s approval, Chris Tall Bear, an Arapaho and Cheyenne tribal member and also a descendant of the victims, emphasized the importance of restorative justice.
“This is a good step towards that. We’re not there yet. We still got a long way, but this is a good step,” Tall Bear stated.
Joining Braided Hair and Tall Bear in support of the memorial were about a dozen other Cheyenne and Arapaho community members who witnessed the passage of the resolution.
The artist commissioned for the memorial, Gerald Anthony Shippen, aims to imbue the piece with a sense of heroism.
“I’m a conduit, you know, to carry this forth,” said Shippen, who hails from Wyoming.
He detailed the design, stating, “This is a statue that represents the people who have survived. The figures will be seven feet tall. So that makes them heroic. The tepee, at about 23 feet tall, is pretty much life-sized, you know, for a tepee.”
The memorial is scheduled to be installed in 2026.
An editor’s note clarified that the correct name of a Senate sponsor is Sen. Rod Pelton, not Sen. Byron Pelton.
This article was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration among KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun. It has also been shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations throughout the state. Funding for the Alliance is partially provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
image source from：https://www.cpr.org/2025/04/15/sand-creek-massacre-memorial-to-replace-civil-war-statue-at-the-colorado-state-capitol/
