The Aspen Indigenous Foundation was founded in 2005 and works to promote Indigenous culture and tradition in the Roaring Fork Valley, which is ancestral Ute land.
Deanne Vitrac-Kessler is the founder and executive director of the foundation. She was born and raised in France, where her family helped establish Tibetan Buddhism in the country.
When she came to the U.S. in the 80s, she began using her own experiences with Indigenous culture to raise awareness for the Indigenous peoples of western Colorado.
The Aspen Indigenous Foundation hosts the annual Shining Mountains Film Festival every year, which showcases Indigenous stories, directors, producers and actors.It will be held this weekend at the Wheeler Opera House.
Vitrac-Kessler said this year they looked for more hopeful films in light of efforts to rewrite history at the national level.
She spoke with Aspen Public Radio’s Regan Mertz about the festival, the foundation’s mission to celebrate diverse populations, and how the organization began.
The conversation below has been edited for clarity and length.
Deanne Vitrac-Kessler: It started, actually, with one Northern Ute family, with the elder named Loya Cesspooch. I had met her down in Sunlight [Mountain Resort]. There, she was doing, with her grandchildren, some dance exhibition. I started to talk with Loya, and she told me that the Aspen area was their ancestral land, and if I could help them come back and reconnect with that.
We saw the need to bring back the first inhabitants of these valleys, because when they come back, they bring their traditional ways, they bring their spirituality. They bring their songs and their beautiful dances, and those are prayers actually. And when they bring that, they bring blessings to this area, and blessings for all the beings who live here. So, it started like that, and then, because we were dealing with young people from her family, they expressed an interest in trying to snowboard or ski.
Mertz: Ikon Pass had partnered with some tribal nations to reduce barriers and increase access to the mountains.
I'm curious about your partnership with Aspen Snowmass here, or if you've seen other initiatives like that, other than the Ikon Pass.
Vitrac-Kessler: Yes, the Aspen Snowmass … they give, every year, about 20 comp tickets and all the rental gears for free for the tribal members who want to come and experience the sports on the mountains. Particularly, we have to remember that this is Ute land, and it's very strong the connection that the natives have with the Earth, right?
We do have tribal members every year who come and try either snowboarding, skiing, just being up on the mountains, riding the gondola. And it would never happen if we didn't have that type of relationship. Because who can afford $220 ticket, right? Not on the res.
I believe, also, Sunlight is amazing. Any Native person with a tribal ID can go and ski for free. But it's amazing, because it gives, as I said, an exposure to those young kids from the reservations to be able to come here and be in that amazing environment and healthy lifestyle. It's really precious.
Mertz: And how do you guys go about picking the films for the festival?
Vitrac-Kessler: The hardest part for us was to find films that really [were] a message of hope, of beauty, of talent, of success.
We don't want to focus on the negativity and the heaviness, because there is plenty of that. We talked about that in previous years, and now we really want to showcase that beauty. Because the Native community, if you look at even the colors that they have when you go to a pow-wow, for example, and their regalia, it's amazing. It's mind blowing to see. And everything has a significance. Everything means something. It's fantastic. So, that's what we wanted to focus on.
Mertz: We’ve talked about being on mountain and the film festival, so can you talk to me about any other programming that the foundation does that you'd like to mention?
Vitrac-Kessler: We have a pow-wow in the spring, which is a gathering of nations that come to compete in dancing, drumming.
It has cultural significance. So, we either do that or we do dance exhibitions in downtown Aspen, again, to bring back the presence of the American Indians back to this valley here. It's very important, because a lot of people in this community have never gone to a reservation. A lot of people don't even know that the American Indians still exist, or they think that they live in teepees with a bridge cloth or something crazy.
We do have that urgency that we need to bridge that kind of myth. When you bring those different communities together, you realize that we are all brothers and sisters of this earth, right? We are all the same. We're all children of this earth, because we all want the same thing: happiness. Nobody wants to suffer. So, it is important to keep those programs here.
Mertz: That was great. Thank you.
Vitrac-Kessler: Thank you so much, Regan. We really appreciate you.
Support for this Nonprofit Spotlight series comes from the Aspen Community Foundation.
