Spectators watched around the circular gathering space as men and women lined up to dance with each other.<\/p>\n
Ute Mountain Ute Chairman Manuel Heart thanked everyone for coming to the dance and helping to preserve the tradition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is our Bear Dance,\u201d Heart said. \u201cLet\u2019s keep it going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several Colorado government officials were in Towaoc for the quarterly meeting of the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs (CCIA), including Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne, CCIA Executive Director Ernest House, Jr. and Attorney General Cynthia Coffman.<\/p>\n
Lynne, who was sworn into office just three weeks ago, said she had been in Towaoc for two days and learned much about the tribe. She was given a tour of the tribal complex in Towaoc and she was invited to dance with Heart during Friday\u2019s ceremony.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an honor to be here,\u201d Lynne said. \u201cGetting the first-hand appreciation is something you don\u2019t get in an office in Denver.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lynne said she was thrilled to be working with the CCIA and House, Jr., who is a member of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe. Lynne, who participated in several rounds of the dance, thanked the young men who \u201cdanced with an old lady.\u201d<\/p>\n
Southern Ute Chairman Clement Frost also visited Towaoc for the day\u2019s festivities. He was grateful to all who attended and helped teach younger people about the tradition of the dance. Preserving the Ute way of life for future generations is important, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is our culture,\u201d Frost said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spectators watched around the circular gathering space as men and women lined up to dance with each other. Ute Mountain Ute Chairman Manuel Heart thanked everyone for coming to the dance and helping to preserve the tradition. \u201cThis is our Bear Dance,\u201d Heart said. \u201cLet\u2019s keep it going.\u201d Several Colorado government officials were in Towaoc […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,60,629,547],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-104771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-montezuma-county","tag-southern-ute-indian-tribe","tag-ute-mountain-ute-indian-tribe"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104771"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=104771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}