Sand Creek: Healing and history come together | John Moore | Arts & Entertainment [Video]

There are many ways of measuring the impact of any given theatrical performance. But they don’t get much more impactful than when a woman approached educator and now theater practitioner Cinnamon Kills First at the end of “Breathing Healing into the Banks of Sand Creek” last May and apologized.

The woman, accompanied by her daughter, told Kills First the two are direct descendants of Colorado Territorial Gov. John Evans, who is credited with bringing railroads to Colorado and starting the University of Denver – but was forced to resign in disgrace in 1865 for his part in instigating the Sand Creek massacre. It was the deadliest day in Colorado history, but only one in a 500-year history of genocide, forced removal and ongoing systemic oppression of Native Americans.

Kills First is herself a direct descendant of survivors from Nov. 29, 1864, when roughly 700 U.S. Army troops attacked a non-combatant village of 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho along the …