Driven by Indigenous advocates, state lawmakers have been meeting during the legislature’s interim months about the needs of Colorado’s Native American population and its two tribal nations, the Ute Mountain Ute and the Southern Ute.
The American Indian Affairs Interim Study Committee was formed last April, during the final weeks of the last legislative session. Indigenous activists Monycka Snowbird and Raven Payment said they were approached by Representative Junie Joseph with an idea to form the committee, and they began facilitating feedback from other community members about what an interim committee could look like and address.
Snowbird and Payment have been instrumental in advocating for bills impacting Indigenous communities. Namely, the two worked on raising awareness around missing or murdered Indigenous people, which led state lawmakers to pass a bill forming the first-ever Office of Liaison for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives.
While lawmakers have passed other Native-specific bills in recent years, such as in-state tuition for tribal students and prohibiting offensive Native American mascots at schools, Snowbird said there’s a need for more.
“We have a very long list of things that we need for our community,” Snowbird said. “500 years of colonialism has left a lot of room for improvements in legislation.”
After speaking with other advocates and organizations, Snowbird and Payment created a list of suggestions for what lawmakers should consider during the summer interim committee. Policy suggestions included a hunting and fishing fee waiver for enrolled tribal members, tribal liaison positions at all state departments, and requiring school curriculums to include Native American history.
For Payment, a crucial goal is for lawmakers to include more Indigenous people in discussions around bills that impact them. She said she had hoped the committee would be a way to encourage inclusion in future legislative sessions.
“There's been a number of health care bills, there's been a number of environment bills where they do not stake hold with our communities,” Payment said. “That directly impacts us as well.”
Payment added that she wants lawmakers to listen to all Indigenous people living in Colorado, not just those belonging to the state’s two sovereign nations. The 2020 census found that about 74,000 people identify as American Indian or Alaska Native.
Lawmakers heard from tribes, organizations and members of the public
The six-person interim committee has met four times, with one final meeting scheduled for later this month.
During their meetings, lawmakers heard presentations from various groups, including the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes, the Denver American Indian Commission and the Truth, Restoration and Education Commission of Colorado.
Lawmakers also visited the reservations of both Ute tribes in southwestern Colorado, a rare trip for legislators.
“There were tours that were taken and then we convened the committee in the council chambers so that we could visit directly with the leadership of both tribes and really hope to facilitate and preserve and improve that government-to-government relationship,” Sen. Jessie Danielson, who serves on the committee, said.
Like other interim committees, the American Indian Affairs Interim Study Committee is permitted to draft bills and prepare some of them to be presented before the full legislature when it reconvenes in January.
The committee chose to draft six bills, but Danielson pulled back one requiring Indian history education in the state curriculum. She decided with community members that rushing the bill would be a disservice to the scope of the bill.
“I think it's way overdue, and I really want to work on this,” Danielson said. “In order to address it properly with respect that it deserves with input from the community all across the state in a comprehensive way, from qualified members of the Native community, we really needed to pull it off the table for the interim committee and address it in the future.”
Danielson said she’s started research into the issue with the hope of introducing a full bill during the 2026 session.
Other bills that are being considered would reclassify bison as wildlife and require cultural competency training for health care providers. Another would assert that state laws do not apply to the Southern Ute tribe unless the bill text specifically says so. Of the five bills drafted and up for consideration, only three can advance to the full legislature.
There are no Indigenous lawmakers serving in the statehouse
None of the six lawmakers on the interim committee are enrolled members of a Native American tribe. In fact, of Colorado’s 100-member General Assembly, none are tribal citizens. That statistic concerns Danielson.
“Representation matters,” Danielson said. “And it is my hope that in the very, very near future that someone from the Native American community is elected to this body and serves because they can speak from the position within the community.”
Activists like Payment and Snowbird said they’re working on getting Indigenous people elected, but they said it isn’t as easy as mounting a winning campaign. The path to representation means government officials must first build trust with those historically oppressed by the systems they represent.
“When we walk in that building, it is one of the most violent places for us to set foot into without actually encountering physical violence,” Payment said. “When you look at the portraits in the state capitol, all the presidents, when you look at the people who are honored, the men – specifically white men – in that building who are being honored with busts and portraits and that sort of thing, they're all individuals who directly tried to exterminate our ancestors.”
Payment acknowledged her work in the legislature as important, but exhausting. She said she and Snowbird are hoping to pass on the torch to other community members so they can focus on work outside the Capitol. The interim committee is a building block in that foundation.
