{"id":109594,"date":"2015-09-14T16:02:53","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T22:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/animas-river-blessed-in-ceremony\/"},"modified":"2015-09-14T16:02:53","modified_gmt":"2015-09-14T22:02:53","slug":"animas-river-blessed-in-ceremony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/animas-river-blessed-in-ceremony\/","title":{"rendered":"Animas River blessed in ceremony"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Flo
Flo Gaia performs a sage blessing Saturday at Memorial Park on Denise Schenk-Basley, her daughter, Violet Basley, 7, and about a dozen others during The Ground Beneath Our Hearts\u2019 global event bringing attention to places around the world suffering environmental damage from mining.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Animas River provided a sparkling backdrop as an earthy advocacy group led community members in a Saturday afternoon healing ceremony for the Animas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tend to avoid wounded places because they\u2019re ugly, but there\u2019s a chance to go to those places and make beauty,\u201d said Liz Gold, an event organizer. \u201cEverything we do today is about the river.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ground Beneath Our Hearts is a \u201cglobal spectacle\u201d raising awareness about places around the world impacted by mining and oil and gas development. About 15 of the group\u2019s affiliates and community members gathered in Memorial Park to offer blessings and flowers to the Animas, which turned a sickly orange last month when a Silverton mine spilled acidic wastewater.<\/p>\n

A sage cleansing and prayers to the sky and earth opened the ceremony, which included an Ojibwe water song and reflections on the spill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like to pay attention to the politics,\u201d said Rebecca Wildbear. \u201cI have regret I didn\u2019t become more involved until this moment. Mines have been dumping water for a long time, and I believe the river will recover, but this spill woke me up to the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Life coach and TGBOH affiliate Victoria FittsMilgrim said Saturday for her was about waking up to issues afflicting the environment and taking action.<\/p>\n

James Cudworth, a Durango resident, said his grandfather worked at the chemical company in Massachusetts associated with the renowned Woburn toxic waste spill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose workers said, \u2018We had no idea.\u2019 These things happen because of corporate greed,\u201d Cudworth said. \u201cIt\u2019s important to recognize we had to evolve to get to this point and realize what we\u2019re doing to the environment. These incidents are driven by corporations.\u201d<\/p>\n

With handfuls of cornmeal and tobacco \u2013 sacred offerings in Native American communities \u2013 the group made its way down to the riverbank in silence to reflect on the river.<\/p>\n

Local resident Denise Basley brought her young daughter Violet to the park to open her eyes and understand more about the incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was important for her to be exposed to what\u2019s going on and see the concern the community has for the environment,\u201d she said. \u201cThe river is the heart of our town.\u201d<\/p>\n

jpace@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members of group pray at Memorial Park<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[304,654,21,950,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-animas-river","tag-ceremony","tag-cortez","tag-durango","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109594","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=109594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109594"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}