The Town of Carbondale officially recognized Indigenous People’s Day at a trustee meeting on Sept. 24, 2019. Annual events to commemorate the day have been organized since by Roaring Fork Valley Circle and, this year, 350 Roaring Fork collaborated on events in Carbondale as well.
This year’s celebration reaffirmed Carbondale’s growing awareness of the rebranded holiday, with about 50 attendees, spanning from children to elders. This time around, it added the inclusion of an award-winning film, “The Condor and the Eagle” (2019), shown at the Third Street Center after a community potluck.
Prior to the film, Carbondale community elder Rita Marsh opened a circle gathering in Sopris Park with an offering of gratitude. Carbondale Mayor Erica Sparhawk honored the day by welcoming everyone and Ross Douglas, one of the founding members of Roaring Fork Valley Circle, led the crowd in the salutation of the seven directions. Carbondalian John Hoffman read a Sopris Sun letter to the editor from Illene Pevec, followed by an excerpt from the newly published book “The Savage Mind: An American Legacy” by Ojibwe writer David Treuer. Steve Kuschner of 350 Roaring Fork shared an excerpt from the book “Ecocivilization” by Jeremy Lent.
One of Carbondale’s matriarchs, Laurie Loeb, drummed and sang a traditional song about Mother Earth, inspiring the crowd to join.
Special guest Bryan Parras, one of the key protagonists of the featured film, gave a well rounded summary of its history during the circle.
Parras’ advocacy journey has expanded from his role as a community organizer in Texas to a global activist, helping to bridge North (the eagle) and South (the condor) American Indigenous resistance to colonialism and extractive economies.
The film, “a profound work of climate journalism,” as stated by Oscar-winning filmmaker Douglas Blushtook, took the audience at the Third Street Center through an epic cross-continental journey following four environmental advocates and Indigenous women leaders, from the tar lands in Canada, to Oklahoma’s oil and gas hub, to Houston, Texas (referred to as the energy capital of the world), to the deep jungles of the Amazon in Ecuador and Peru.
Fighting against the Keystone XL pipeline (shut down in 2021 by President Joe Biden) and the expansion of Canadian tar sands oil extraction — and its social repercussions, including the murders and disappearances of Canadian Indigenous women — are pivotal storylines in the documentary. The film’s four protagonists, Casey Camp-Horinek (Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma), Melina Laboucan Massimo (Lubicon Cree First Nation of Alberta), Yudith Nieto (Mexican-American/Indigenous frontline organizer from East Houston, Texas) and Patricia Gualinga Montalvo (Kichwa First People of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon) learned from each others’ long legacies of resistance.
The movie shows a couple of the protagonists partaking in the front row of the 2014 People’s Climate March in New York, the largest in history at the time, and highlights Camp-Horinek and Gualinga Montalvo being part of a group of historic leaders who drafted and were the first to sign the International Indigenous Women’s Treaty Protecting the Rights of Nature in September 2015.
Though the timeline of the film takes place about 10 years ago, most of the issues portrayed in it are still at stake today, according to the directors of the film.