Finding Our Way: Listening to Indigenous Peoples

Finding Our Way: Listening to Indigenous Peoples
Reflecting and Discerning Together as Rocky Mountain UCC churches

Saturday, October 24, 2026 1pm to 5pm
Lakewood UCC (100 Carr Street, Lakewood, CO)
Zoom option offered but your best experience will be in-person

*Light refreshments provided*
RSVP: bit.ly/LandDiscernmentGathering

Photo on left by Salix Renan from 2026 Re-member trip to Pine Ridge | Photo on right of Basil Brave Heart
With Guest Teacher: Basil Brave Heart (Oglala Lakota), Pine Ridge
Basil will join us from around 3:30 to 4:30pm on Zoom
Let’s gather as a Rocky Mountain UCC community whose churches have:
● Engaged in service learning at the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations;
● Paid respects at the Sand Creek Massacre site;
● Supported the Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual Healing Run;
● Written Land Acknowledgement covenants; or
● Read books by Native authors.
Together we will reflect and discern:
● What have we learned through going and listening to Indigenous Peoples?
● How are we seeing or experiencing the world differently now?
● What might our individual and collective responsibilities and next steps be?

Basil Brave Heart is an Oglala Lakota Elder who lives in Pine Ridge, South Dakota
and will be joining us via Zoom.

He is a Catholic boarding school survivor, retired school administrator, addiction
counselor, and Korean War combat veteran who served as a paratrooper in the 1950s.
As a young child in the 1930s, Basil’s Grandma Lucy told him about the 1890 Wounded
Knee massacre. She counseled him to forgive the soldiers who perpetrated the
massacre. A dream of his grandma later guided Basil to change the name of a peak in
the Black Hills. In 2016, it was renamed “Black Elk Peak” at the federal level. Basil
studies how quantum physics corroborates the wisdom woven throughout the Lakota
language and other Indigenous languages. Over the last decade, he has been
facilitating truth, healing, and forgiveness across historical divides. You can listen to an
interview with him on The Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery podcast or read his
book Awaken the Sacred: Healing with Traditional Lakota Knowledge, Quantum
Physics, and the Divine..

WHY THIS GATHERING?
Many Rocky Mountain Conference churches have attended Re-member programs on the
Pine Ridge reservation or participated in service projects on the Rosebud reservation and
learned from Lakota peoples.

Many churches have also been learning about the atrocities of the Sand Creek Massacre in
eastern Colorado, carried out by Christian-affliated military on Cheyenne and Arapaho
peoples and have been learning from the Sand Creek Massacre Foundation.
These have elicited personal reflection, insights on power and privilege, implications of
broken treaties, and spiritual awakenings around the Land and human relationships.

The October 24th gathering is an invitation to:
– Reflect on your experiences, what you’ve learned, your wonderings,
– Pause to discern personal and communal next steps,
– Name our responsibilities as Christian congregations to live into accountable
relationships with Indigenous Peoples and within our denomination,
– Imagine what might be possible if we collaborate and work together.
Gathering Facilitated by:
– Bry Brannan – Land Discernment Minister with Juniper Formation
– Salix Renan – Basket Weaver and Land Stories & Spiritual Care Coach
If you or someone from your church is interested in offering a reflection, please reach out to: bry@juniperformation.org or salix.weaves@gmail.com

Hosted by:
– Lakewood UCC’s Love Leads Team | loveleads@lakewooducc.com
– Supported by an RMC UCC In the Mud Grant