A Legacy of Resilience: The Public Launch of the 100 Years of Silence Project

When the Ute Mountain Ute tribe publicly launched its 100 Years of Silence project on March 23 in Salt Lake City, the title chosen for the event was the Ute people’s “legacy of resilience.” 

That legacy was on full display as over a dozen speakers took the stage before a capacity crowd at The Leonardo’s auditorium to commemorate the 101st anniversary of what’s sometimes called the “Posey War” of 1923. 

Project Director Shaun Ketchum — a descendent of the Ute leader W. Posey, who was killed in present-day Bears Ears National Monument in 1923 — moderated the event, which he divided into four themes: trauma, silence, healing, and renewal. 

Trauma: Unveiling the Past

The first theme referred to the need to reckon with the context around the events of 1923 in San Juan County, Utah, including the violence that was inflicted on Nuche and Paiute people living near Blanding and in Allen Canyon. 

Dustin Jansen (Diné), director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs, represented Utah Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson at the event, and he helped kick off the day’s presentations by speaking about the importance of historical scholarship from an Indigenous perspective. “For so long in our universities and schools, the emphasis was put on really a western European version of American history,” he said. “We need to speak our own history. We need to write our own history.”

The sentiment encapsulated one of the goals of the 100 Years of Silence project. The project, which began in 2023, seeks to tell the history of the so-called “Posey War” from a Ute perspective for the first time. Speakers at the event referred to the traumatic series of events that intensified on March 19, 1923, and led to the six-week-long, forcible internment of around 80 Ute women, children, and men in a barbed wire cage in the streets of Blanding; the murder of two Ute men, including Posey; the loss of access to traditional Ute land in the Bears Ears area; and the coerced enrollment of Ute children in boarding schools. 

“Despite the horrors of 1923 and the violent colonialism that Indigenous people faced across the continent, understanding the past can help prevent such events from happening again,” Jansen said. “It can be healing if you know your history,” he added. 

Ute Mountain Ute Councilman Malcolm Lehi spoke several times throughout the day, and he emphasized the need to find common ground in a common history. 

Ute scholar Forrest Cuch described the events of 1923 as part of the holocaust of Indigenous peoples in the Western Hemisphere over the last 500 years. “100 Years of Silence represents the holocaust that occurred here in Utah,” Cuch said. “Forced removal, displacement, and total loss of traditional homelands are perhaps the greatest forms of trauma that people can experience.” Cuch compared the removals of Ute peoples from their homelands, including the internment of Allen Canyon Utes in the stockade in Blanding, to the Long Walk of the Navajo and the Trail of Tears. “It wasn’t that long ago,” he continued. “This was 1923. The deepness of the sorrow, grief, and trauma that the Ute people experienced at that time has hardened and stayed with us to this day.” 

Healing, Cuch concluded, cannot occur until the truth is internalized and accepted.

A Century of Silence

The second theme explored on The Leonardo’s stage was that of silence. One hundred years ago, non-Indigenous communities in San Juan County quickly began telling their side of the “last Indian war,” a term used to inaccurately refer to what happened in 1923. Until now, the whole story has never been told to the wider public. 

But breaking the silence requires exploring the fallout from the 1923 internment through various modes of understanding. Seven Ute Mountain Ute artists from White Mesa interpreted the century of silence through artwork that was displayed in the Bears Ears Gallery at The Leonardo, including intricate beadwork, paintings, handcrafted traditional flutes, and more.

Lauana Morris, one of the artists, presented on her painting titled “Healing within the ‘Corral.’” 

The piece included the healing Bear Dance corral, which is part of the traditional Bear Dance ceremony, alongside the barbed-wire corral used to imprison Ute people in Blanding in 1923. “I put the two together,” Morris said, “because our ancestors were never able to talk about the past.” 

Aldean Ketchum discussed a flute he made as part of the art project, and he played a song that told the story of the horse that Posey rode as he fled the posse that chased him into Comb Wash in 1923. 

Toni Pelt, another artist, showed her mixed media piece entitled “Into Harmony,” which features a sunset over the Bears Ears Buttes. Even after a hundred years of silence, Pelt said, “we’re not forgotten, and we’re still here.” 

Pelt’s daughter, Lakesia Lopez, discussed her beadwork and the significance of participating in the project. “This is a win for Indian Country,” she said. “When one tribe wins, we all win.” 

Healing: Nurturing Restoration

As the event progressed, speakers continued to remind the audience that unveiling historical traumas and ending the century of silence was being done in the service of healing. 

Aldean Ketchum returned to play more songs on his flute, and pointed out that the events of 1923 represented the endurance of traditional Ute ways. “We were the last Indian people to resist the government,” he said. 

Multiple presenters referred to the annual Bear Dance in White Mesa, which continues to foster healing.

Project director Shaun Ketchum helped bring the event to a close by thanking the community for sharing the “stories, voices, and dreams of our ancestors.” He expressed gratitude to the elders for leading the way and to the generations yet to come. 

Ketchum spoke about his desire to see the events of 1923 acknowledged in a public memorial in Blanding near the site of the internment camp, and for the “Posey War” to be renamed to more accurately reflect the violence of that time. 

“May our collective effort bring to close a century of silence,” he said, “to usher in an era of healing and empowerment for all.” 

-by author Zak Podmore, part of the 100 Years of Silence Team