Indigenous Peoples’ Day: A Living Testament to Our Survival

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is far more than a celebration — it is a living reminder.

It is a reminder of everything that was taken from us and everything that could not be erased. It is a reminder of the strength it took for our ancestors to keep speaking their languages in whispers, to sing their songs behind closed doors, to carry their prayers in silence when the world around them declared those prayers illegal.

Not long ago, it was a crime in the United States for Indigenous peoples to simply exist as ourselves. Our ceremonies, our ways of knowing, our sacred practices — the very heartbeat of our cultures — were outlawed. Generations risked imprisonment, violence, and even death for practicing the traditions that had sustained us since time immemorial. It was not until 1978, with the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, that we were legally permitted to openly hold ceremony, speak our languages, and pray in the ways of our ancestors.

For many, that was within their own lifetime. The memory of that suppression is not distant history — it is a story our grandparents and great-grandparents lived. And yet, despite every attempt to silence us, we are still here.

Resilience as Resistance

Indigenous Peoples’ Day is not simply a holiday on a calendar. It is a testament to our survival — to the ways we have refused to disappear, refused to be written out of the narrative, refused to surrender our sacred knowledge to the forces that sought to destroy it.

Our resilience has always been resistance. Every prayer spoken aloud is a declaration that our spiritual lifeways endure. Every drumbeat that echoes across the land is a heartbeat carried forward from generations past. Every story shared between elder and youth is an act of reclamation — a refusal to let the thread of memory be broken.

We carry the power of those who came before us, not only in our blood but in our responsibility to continue their work. We use that power not only to honor our ancestors but to bring them home — to return their names to our stories, their remains to the earth they were taken from, and their spirits to the communities from which they were stolen.

Honoring the Past, Living the Present

For the People of La Junta, this work is deeply personal and profoundly sacred. It is woven into every project we undertake — from the repatriation of ancestors who were held in distant museum collections, to the weaving of burial mats using traditional cattails, to the shaping of pottery from the very clay of our homelands. Each of these acts is more than cultural revitalization. They are acts of sovereignty, acts of love, and acts of continuity.

We do this work knowing that our ancestors are not gone — they are with us. Their presence is felt in the prayers spoken at dawn, in the songs that rise into the evening sky, and in the hands of young people learning the skills and stories that once risked being forgotten. Through each ceremony, each workshop, each gathering, we breathe life into traditions that connect us across centuries and landscapes.

Living Nations, Future Ancestors

We are not relics of the past, nor are we fragments of history to be studied and archived. We are living nations — dynamic, evolving, and deeply rooted. We are thriving cultures — creators, caretakers, and storytellers. And we are future ancestors, shaping a path that will sustain generations yet to come.

This day — and every day — is an opportunity to reaffirm that truth. It is a chance to celebrate who we are, to honor those who came before us, and to commit ourselves to the work still ahead. It is a time to teach, to remember, and to ensure that no law, no policy, and no act of erasure will ever again sever us from our ways of life.

At People of La Junta for Preservation, this is the heart of our mission. We work to protect sacred sites, repatriate ancestors, revitalize traditional knowledge, and create spaces for ceremony, language, and community to thrive. Through these efforts, we are not only preserving history — we are shaping a future where our stories, songs, and ceremonies continue to guide us, just as they always have.

Today — and every day — we speak loudly and clearly the truth our ancestors fought to protect:

We are still here. We have always been here. And we will continue to be.