Scott Gilmore’s layoff is another broken promise for the indiginous community (Opinion)

Over the past couple of days I ve had conversations and reviewed numerous letters from individuals within the City and County of Denver all of whom are committed to ensuring the continuation of Scott Gilmore s work My great-great-uncle once declared They made us plenty of promises more than I can remember but they never kept but one They promised to take our land and they took it Chief Red Cloud Oglala Lakota known as Mahp ya L ta There is a substantial divide between what is being promised and the reality of keeping that promise We know that you cannot replace Scott Gilmore in the City of Denver no matter how hard you try Stop fooling yourself and listen We know what is best for us Listen to us The individuals who made the decision to include Scott Gilmore who worked for years in the city s Parks Department in last week s layoffs never consulted with our neighborhood These bureaucrats never do We are the forgotten people the invisible people who are thrown away because of money Who in the Denver City administration was ever adopted in a Sacred Hunka ceremony The action is going to hurt American Indians living on the Front Range directly Who amongst the Denver administrators knows our creation story of the Buffalo Who amongst you is going to the sweat lodge and pray with us as we make plans about Buffalo restoration Who has ever been in a Pipe Ceremony Who knows how to handle that pipe What is its significance It is doubtful that any of your staff will get invited to a Yuwipi Ceremony These are things that cannot be learned from a book they can only be realized through participation You can t just expect to participate because you want to You must be invited It takes a great number of years to develop the respect of our people And even longer to develop the trust It takes even longer to become a part of our Sacred Circle of Life We have a different way of seeing the world and everything around us This is our homeland This is where our ancestors died protecting a way of life We have never forgotten our methods despite the torture and brutal actions to convert us to your avenues We had our civil methods of interacting with other people Among the Cheyenne we had a sacred council of peace called the Council of The members were peace chiefs We did not seek out war against people coming to our homelands We sought peace until such a time that our destiny and continued existence were in jeopardy Then and only then did we retaliate to protect our families and a way of life The people who came here ignored all those good strategies and forced their concept of civilization on us All my life I have noted that I hope that I never succumb to becoming civilized Now more than ever when I look across America and see what is happening on the national level I see the devolution of your civility That kind of future is bleak and uncomfortable at best That is not what we want Who amongst you knows the leadership structure of the Denver Indian society Who speaks for our Denver public Do you know perhaps even one person Do you have any connections with the leaders or public members in our area Our neighborhood is small and when someone like Scott comes along we are comforted and start growing confidence that perhaps the city administration will look back at the iniquitous history that left us landless in our own homeland Our methods strongly condemn current promises It emphasizes the importance of keeping one s word highlighting the negative consequences of dishonesty and the value of trustworthiness We use careful consideration before making a promise and stress the need to fulfill it The city has put us in a challenging position because we know that you will never be able to fulfill your promises It took Scott the greater part of his entire career to gain the confidence and trust needed for us to trust and respect him He earned it and he knows the secrets needed to make and sustain good relationships with our diverse locality My people think differently from you We invariably have and inevitably will That is the innate nature of our people Our values are vastly different than yours The first law of our people is respect something that is sorely lacking in the approaches of the people around us The second way of our people is about relationships We try to treat everyone as relatives This is hard to do because it is a foreign concept for others We end our prayers by saying mitaku oyasin all my relatives We tell our children to listen and only speak when spoken to We have similar expectations in all our relationships Listen That is complicated for a multitude of people who make critical decisions for the people We are a small neighborhood with no degrees of separation we all know each other We are asking you to bring Scott Gilmore back It is a straightforward request to fulfill You have seen various letters from numerous of our people And only a meager responses promise things that we know can t be kept We are watching and organizing our future action Please don t try that famous historic tactic of divide and conquer It would only exacerbate this situation We want to negotiate with you and find a meaningful compromise that works for our people We want you to listen we want you to hear our concerns because we are tired of looking back and seeing the genocide of the past We want a rightful place in creating a meaningful future for our people in our homeland Richard B Williams is a Lakota Elder who has lived in Denver for years Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns editorials and more To send a letter to the editor about this article submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail