Longest Walk host in Salida, Colorado, Nick Standing Bear takes flight to Spirit WorldThis is to let you know that Nick Standing Bear, Lakota, Vietnam Vet and former POW, partner of Becky Donlan and your host in Salida, Colorado (Monarch Pass), took his life last Thursday. He was found at the Sacred Bear Circle, an ancient site east of Salida and we will scatter his ashes there on Tuesday. Sing prayers for your brother.
In solidarity,
Aho, Winter Ross
Crestone, Colorado 6/14/08
From: Mano Cockrum
Out of everyone I looked forward to meeting who helped in Colorado, Nick and Becky were the two I looked forward to meeting the most. They had been trying to educate the people of their region about sacred sites and to get harsher punishments for those destroying them, and a perspective to law enforcement to understand the extremity of the situation. They had a powerpoint developed and I had hoped to bring their message to D.C., but still have no financial resources to even visit anyone from Colorado who helped or the Walk in D.C.
Please take some time to offer a prayer for him and his partner Becky. Nick "Bear" reached out to me from their entire region willing to get support and hospitality for the walkers, facing obstacles such as the locals often racist views and resistance to helping native people, and coming up with tons of donations, spending several hundred of his own for food and advertising to get support, and he and Becky offering their time, energy and homes up to walkers. The visit took a toll, as it will on a community the walkers visit, but Becky and Nick had to bear the weight of it alone, not having an entire community to support them, the closest support being far south in Crestone.
I am very sad that I will never meet him, having spent much time talking to him and knowing he was a true warrior for the people. I can only hope his work lives on and gains the support he needed for it while alive.
Ahee'hee,
Mano-
Mano Cockrum
Indigenous Youth Sovereignty Project
http://www.iysp.org/
Longest Walk Talk Radio's interview with Becky Donlan in Salida, Colorado
2008-03-27_salida.mp3
39:2013.5 Mb
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