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EPISODE ONE : DENVER
OUR STORYTELLERS
“THERE IS SNOW
ON THE GROUND”
Heniiniini’
(Arapaho)
The Rocky Mountains, running from the northern reaches of Yukon to New Mexico in the American Southwest, are home to some of Turtle Island’s highest peaks. In what is now Colorado, these mountains and their surrounding foothills have for thousands of years been the ancestral territories of the Ute, Arapaho and Cheyenne peoples.
For the Arapaho, these snow-capped mountains have always held deep spiritual and cultural significance. Their creation story speaks of the white owl battling with the thunderbird, where the owl, representing winter, won and created the Never Summer Mountains in what is now Colorado’s Front Range.
In the Arapaho language, the word heniiniini’ means “there is snow on the ground,” referring to the annual snowfall in the mountains which acts as the very lifeblood of everything that lives downstream.
Like the other Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, the Arapaho believe in the fundamental sacredness of water and how it binds together all living beings. The snowcaps of the Rocky Mountains act as the physical and spiritual beating heart of each river, stream, and lake in the American West.
Heniiniini’, refers to the life-sustaining snowpack that falls in these mountains every year, bringing vitality to life downstream and supporting the ecosystems we depend on. The Arapaho have forever honoured this relationship, maintaining balance between the human and natural worlds.
But colonialism disrupted this symbiotic relationship, removing Indigenous people from their ancestral territories and destroying the connection between the people and the natural world. As climate change worsens and winters get warmer, the snowpack in the Rockies has continuously decreased.
This has resulted in less summer runoff, leading to more droughts, increasingly erratic wildfire seasons and permanent damage to vital ecosystems, affecting the traditional ways of life of many of the Indigenous people living downstream.
The same peaks spoken of in Arapaho creation stories are now world-renowned destinations for winter recreation such as skiing and snowboarding. But that snow doesn’t only provide the powder for turns; it is, first and foremost, at the very center of our existence as a species.
Today, Indigenous athletes and activists alike are reminding people of the symbiotic relationship they hold with water and the natural environment, and how they too must act to protect the winters that bring life itself.
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