2026 Blog Entries by date
Feb 27 Becoming Earthkeepers
Mar 14 Rick Williams Report: Land Theft in Boulder County
Mar 28 No Kings Day — a government employee on the constitution
April 22 Earth Day contributions of “Love Letters to the Earth”
Becoming EarthKeepers
It all begins with an idea.
Feb. 27, 2026
Becoming EarthKeepers: A Practical Guide for Those Who Hear the Call to Protect the Earth, by Justin McAffee, a book via Substack for now.
The introduction to this book is wonderful and I include this from it:
EarthKeeping is less an identity than a relationship enacted daily. You can’t buy it or badge it. You live it through the choices that keep life going: mending a watershed, tending a garden, refusing a pipeline, feeding neighbors, the Diné grandmother weaving stories of the four sacred mountains so her grandchildren will remember their orientation, the young man in Eugene turning a strip of lawn into native pollinator ground.
There are EarthKeepers in every biome and neighborhood ... following the same unwritten rule: Life is Primary. To take this pathway is to undergo a shift in allegiance. Your loyalty moves from institutions to ecosystems, from parties to places. You begin to think not of “sustainability,” a word soaked in bureaucracy, but of reciprocity.
You learn to ask: What can I give back for what I take? You stop seeing climate change as a problem to fix and start seeing it as a symptom of forgetting who we are.
EarthKeepers are those who choose kinship over consumption, presence over progress, belonging over control.
Their work is to reestablish the covenant between people and place, to stand guard over the sources of life, and to model what right relationship looks like in a broken time.
Theft in Boulder County
Rick's Report March 14th, 2026
I've been very busy over the last six weeks and have realized that the work I do to educate the public about the truth of American Indian history in Colorado is daunting. I was in Boulder listening to People talk about Buffalo. This is a good thing if they understand the Truth about Boulder and all the land in Boulder County.
The history of the city and county of Boulder is an enigma for anyone planning the future use of the land or waterways. The first question that I would propose in any kind of development of the Front Range is, the question, have you done a title search? Can you legally determine how the land was taken from Native Nations that held legal congressional title to it? (SEE attached map of Boulder 1859).
I hope that all People, especially our Allies and those in Academia, are challenging the status quo and not overlooking the Truth about the land and how it was dishonorably taken. It is a tragic story of dispossession, and there should have been historical consequences of land theft; however, the forced removal and relocation of the People of the Native Nations prevented that. The fraud committed against Native Nations in 1860's was the worst ever. The invaders' unscrupulous actions have gone unreported for 160 years. Time does not resolve guilt or provide any excuse for not making amends. That is our responsibility today. That is the responsibility of the cities, counties, state government, and the federal government to recognize the illegal actions and take meaningful corrective actions. Failure to deal with the Truth and consequences of the aftermath of the removal of Native People from their homelands should be a part of every conversation about re-development or re-structure that happens in the homelands of Native People. And until such time as there have been appropriate consultations and constructive restoration and compensation for losses, the moral consciousness of guilt will remain. We can do better.
Here is the Truth about Boulder.
For over 4 years, I have been researching the Cheyenne and Arapaho, who once owned the eastern half of Colorado. I have irrefutable evidence based on the research that the land where the city of Boulder and all the land in Boulder County is located was illegally taken. We have not found any evidence that the land was paid for.
This is where the Truth needs to be told, and the RE-EDUCATION PROJECT begins.
Let’s begin in 1834, when the American Indian Trade and Intercourse Act was enacted by Congress. It vested title to all the land west of the Mississippi to American Indians. The 1834 Act also prohibited anyone from entering Indian Country and staying. Only the military and traders were allowed on the land. All others were to be removed and fined $1000. The Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851) was ratified by the Senate, but it was altered, and no president ever signed it, making it invalid. The simple law holds that a treaty is a contract and must be signed by both parties.
The Fort Wise Treaty of 1861 was negotiated with the United States government and only the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations of the Upper Arkansas River. The land ceded in this Treaty was only for land south of the South Platte River, and NOT with the Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho, who refused to participate in the process. The land in Boulder County was not included in the Treaty because it was owned by the Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho. See Kappler’s Treaties Vol. II, page 807.
For those who are really interested in educating themselves, they should review the Organic Act of 1861, which created the Colorado Territory. The Organic Act of 1861 reaffirmed Native Nations' legal rights to land and provided specific instructions for taking the land.
Although the land in Boulder City, Nebraska Territory, was titled and sold in 1859, they did not and could not have owned land. NONE of the land belonging to the Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho was ever ceded to the United States government. And none of these people were legally on the land according to the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834.
The government knew they did not own the land, and even though they tried to get the people to give up the land, they refused to come in. (For an interesting article about the land, see Prelude to War, by William Unrau, Colorado History Magazine 1964.)
Several years later, after the Sand Creek Massacre, the US Commissioner of Indian Affairs and the US government concocted a means to steal the land. In the Treaty of the Little Arkansas River of 1865, they included a description of the land north of the South Platte River in Article 2. Thereby claiming that the land was legally ceded, except that there were no representatives from the Northern Cheyenne or Northern Arapaho present, and none ever signed that Treaty.
What about those 43,000 acres that CU got from Article 10 of the Enabling Act of 1875? I wish I had known that 40 years ago, when we were trying to get tuition waivers for our students, or when we renamed Nichole’s Hall to Cheyenne Arapaho Hall. We could have gotten the entire building and had our students stay there for free. It is not too late.
Every City and County representative needs to read this. And every city and county official and employee should read this to get the Truth about the land in Boulder. It does not belong to any other Native Nation. The government officials should immediately consult with those two Nations to resolve these legal issues. Failure to come to terms with stolen lands, the economic destruction, and illegal occupation undermines the moral authority of all the residents of the County. We must find ways to make amends and commit to restorative justice for the First People.
Please share this with your friends and relatives so they can learn the TRUTH. Perhaps the University and high schools in the county could begin teaching about the TRUTH. Until that happens, it will be your story to tell…..
In a good way,
Rick Williams
People of the Sacred Land
This map is unbelievable. All of the lots were illegal as was all other land transactions.
Richard B. Williams
People of the Sacred Land
President
720.724.6453
March 28, 2026 No Kings Day in Colorado
from https://coloradonewsline.com/2026/03/28/demonstrators-no-kings-colorado/
‘No love of our Constitution’
Dolores Martinez Hernandez, 73, came to Denver’s No Kings protest because she’s concerned about government overreach and the war in Iran.
Martinez Hernandez retired from working at the city attorney’s office in 2010, and worked on pro bono cases for another ten years before fully retiring in 2021. But four weeks ago, she renewed her law license so she could help a “highly regarded” member of her church who is in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Aurora.
Democrats should listen to their constituents instead of to lobbyists that influence them, Martinez Hernandez said. Republicans “have no love of our Constitution, have no love of our democracy,” she said. They “will do anything to appease” President Donald Trump, she said.
“Many (elected officials) have become so comfortable in theirpositions, with their high paid salaries, that they don’t even have to think about the rule of law. It’s the rule of … me and my interests,” Martinez Hernandez said. “I did child abuse work, and the question was always presented as, ‘what is the best interest of this child?’ But [now] it’s my interest above anybody else’s.”
For EARTH DAY 2026 — April 22.
Thich Nat Hahn, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher and writer, offered “Love Letters to the Earth” in a book which Joseph Lam, a friend, read from at an Earth Day Celebration he created at the Cloud Monastery in Morrison, CO. He then invited us to write our own Love Letters, two of which are included here:
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE
I. When we hold your Love, Mama Earth/Goddess together in this gathering and humm like bees in a hive
How palpable you ane we are Together, means to be the WE of YOU Earth resonating,
Vibrating Rippling O U T, B L O S S O M I N G human, plant, trees in a musical symphony
II. My heart has been SOOO heavy with the sadness inflicted upon me and upon the world —
Creating weavings of monke-mind PTSD (post trauma stress dismay)
That veils my energy and toxifies my joy, depletes my motivation
III. SUCH JOY today to CELEBRATE and honor MOTHER EARTH, together AH!! Satisfying
To be honoring intentionally and thoughtfully. Sharing her generosity of food around a circle of
Tables filed with our 50 mouths satiated as one animal-being enjoying in silence.
And reading our Love-Letter poems aloud to Mother Earth and to one another.
from Bonnie Sundance
Dear Pachamama,
Thank you for all that you selflessly give.
Your water, your resources, so all life can live.
We're all being misled with what we blindly glorify -
Worshipping Instagram influencers instead of the Earth and the Sky.
Your beauty's underappreciated and taken for granted, when we can
Honor our Mother with every seed that gets planted.
Yet we take and extract - without an exchange - it's like an abusive relationship,
and it needs to change.
We feel your Spirit, your Heart beats in us all -
We're not separate - it's time we answer the call.
Michael LeBeau