A report published this week by a Native American-led nonprofit examines in detail the dispossession of $1.7 trillion worth of Indigenous homelands in Colorado by the state and the U.S. and the more than $546 million the state has reaped in mineral extraction from them.
The report, shared first with The Associated Press, identifies 10 tribal nations that have ''aboriginal title, congressional title, and treaty title to lands within Colorado'' and details the ways the land was legally and illegally taken. It determined that many of the transactions were in direct violation of treaty rights or in some cases lacked title for a legal transfer.
''Once we were removed, they just simply started divvying up the land, creating parcels and selling it to non-Natives and other interests and businesses,'' said Dallin Maybee, an artist, legal scholar and enrolled member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe who took part in the Truth, Restoration, and Education Commission, which compiled the report.
''When you think about examples of land theft,'' Maybee continued, ''that is one of the most blatant instances that we could see.''
The commission was convened by People of the Sacred Land, a Colorado-based nonprofit that works to document the history of Indigenous displacement in the state. The commission and its report are modeled after similar truth and reconciliation commissions that sought to comprehensively account for genocide and the people still affected by those acts and governmental policies.
The report also recommends actions that can be taken by the state, the federal government and Congress, including honoring treaty rights by resolving illegal land transfers; compensating the tribal nations affected; restoring hunting and fishing rights; and levying a 0.1% fee on real estate deals in Colorado to ''mitigate the lasting effects of forced displacement, genocide, and other historical injustices'''
''If acknowledgment is the first step, then what is the second step?'' Maybee said. ''That's where some of the treaties come in. They guaranteed us health and welfare and education, and we just simply want them to live up to those promises.''
That could look something like what happened not long ago in Canada, where, following the conclusion of a truth and reconciliation commission in 2015, the government set aside $4.7 billion to support Indigenous communities affected by its Indian residential schools.