A member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, Campbell grew up poor and spent part of his childhood in a California orphanage, yet he led a life of excelling. He became a judo champion in 1963, winning a gold medal at the Pan-American Games; served in the Air Force for four years where he earned his GED; went on to get degrees in physical education and fine arts at San Jose State University; and honed skills as a silversmith and jeweler. His Western belt buckles were prized.

He entered politics in 1982, first serving as a state legislator. He was next elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving rural Western Colorado from 1987 to 1993, then was elected to two terms in the U.S. Senate.

When Senator Campbell switched from being a registered Democrat to a Republican on March 3, 1995, “the switch was shocking and traumatic to his staff,” said Ken Lane, his longtime chief of staff. He quit soon after Campbell’s announcement.

Lane said there was lots of speculation about why Campbell became a Republican. A major irritant for Campbell, Lane recalled, was what the senator called the “elitist” attitude of Democratic leaders in Denver and Boulder, who found him too moderate. Campbell’s main support always came from the union stronghold of Pueblo, in southern Colorado.

It was known that Republican Senator and majority leader Bob Dole courted Campbell to make the switch, and once he did, Campbell was appointed chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Campbell relished the job, advocating for Tribal rights and spurring the creation of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historical Site in Colorado, where two of his ancestors had been killed by U.S. soldiers.

Dea Jacobson, who worked in his Grand Junction, Colorado office when he was a Democrat, called him a force of nature. “He could do anything he put his mind to,” she said. He was a licensed pilot, and he also earned a commercial driver’s license, which he used in 2000 and 2012 to drive huge Colorado Christmas trees to the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Though his party changed, Jacobson said, Campbell’s politics remained the same: “He was pro-choice, pro-union and, despite criticism from some environmentalists, he backed key legislation protecting Colorado’s public lands.” Over the years, Campbell became known as someone who’d horse trade to get the bills he cared about passed.

One of his major victories was passage of the Colorado Wilderness Act of 1993, which designated or expanded 19 wilderness areas. The landmark legislation had been 13 years in the making. Campbell also worked on the creation of Great Sand Dunes National Park and helped make the Black Canyon National Monument a national park.

Campbell had a major impact on Colorado’s Four Corners region. Working with the Tribes he changed the Animas–La Plata water project to protect the free-flowing Animas River, despite criticism from environmentalists over the pumping of water uphill into a dry basin. The deal fulfilled long-overdue water rights held by the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Tribes.

I’d called Campbell last October when I was writing a column about changes coming for the reservoir named after him—Lake Nighthorse—authorized by Congress in 1968 as part of the Animas-La Plata Project. I’d been told Campbell was in poor health, but he answered the phone, later telling me, “I’m suffering from old persons’ problems so I’m not following water wars these days. But don’t forget what Mark Twain said about water: ‘Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting.’”

Jacobson wasn’t surprised that Nighthorse was affable in our conversation. “He loved newspaper people,” she recalled, and when they were on the road in rural Colorado, “he liked to stop in at a town’s weekly paper.” Though he didn’t drink, he might also visit a local bar or café to start a conversation with locals. Before long, she said, “he was holding court.”

Lane’s recollection was equally warm. “Ben was funny, irreverent and endearing, and he connected with people of all backgrounds.”

A private memorial service will be held by his family at their ranch in Ignacio, Colorado. He is survived by his wife Linda, his children Colin and Shanan, and four grandchildren.

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.

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Maybe it was the fatigue of the trip. Maybe it was the years she spent herding this class to the finish line. The hours answering their phone calls, figuring out plan Bs, worrying about them at every setback.

As she addressed the crowd, Law was nearly overcome with emotion. She paused before regaining control. There was so much to celebrate. 

On this day, 14 students donned caps and gowns, the largest graduating class in the school’s history. Among them were a record four students who graduated at least a semester early and three who were dual enrolled in a community college. Eight were headed to college or Job Corps. 

For a tiny school that lags far behind conventional performance measures, these were significant wins. 

The school, which serves majority Native American students, reports higher-than-average rates of foster care, homelessness and involvement in the criminal justice system. Some 70% of students live in single-parent households or have a deceased parent. In 2018, the on-time graduation rate was 0%. 

I spent four months visiting the school during the semester before graduation this year. Data points can’t capture the hurdles they faced—lost loved ones and an education system that’s historically failed Indigenous students. 

But what the seniors had to their advantage was an advocate and a reliable source of support: Principal Katie Law. An athletic white woman, Law often engaged in tasks that went beyond traditional principal duties. She made sure to learn the personal lives, history and family dynamics of all her students. 

Well before Law was recently awarded Principal of the Year by the Wyoming Association of Secondary Schools in a surprise ceremony, it was clear she had a rare level of commitment. 

“You’re not going to find another principal or educator that puts as much time in as she does in the evenings, on the weekends,” District Superintendent Curt Mayer said.

Law helps students get their driver’s licenses, chaperones college visits and makes calls when kids get arrested. Students have gone to Law with news that they are pregnant, and she has later cared for their infants in her office while they attend class. 

The motivation is simple. “I want to see these students succeed, and I’m going to do what it takes,” she said.

Law grew up in Colstrip, Montana—30 miles from the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. She was the daughter of educators, and never thought she would enter that world. 

But she wanted to help people, and education ultimately became the vehicle for that. During her first year of teaching in Nebraska, she found a distraught student crying in the bathroom one day and sat comforting her for an hour. When Law saw her years later, the student told her she was a pivotal teacher. It dawned on Law then that she’s different.

“I get a lot of, ‘That’s not your job,’” she says. “I’m like, ‘I know, but whose job is it?’”

She was hired to teach in the Arapaho school’s district 18 years ago, at age 23. The school was rough. Drug use and gang violence were common. She kept her head down, helped where she could. Slowly, she started building relationships. 

The work can be devastating, and many fixes don’t last. Law is stubborn. “I think my biggest asset is, I won’t give up.”

Law doesn’t pretend to share a background with her reservation students, but she uses her own experiences to build empathy. School didn’t come easily to her. Her brother died young from diabetes. And she witnessed a murder at age 14. These are experiences her students can relate to.

It seems to work. At graduation, the seniors handed out roses to people who were meaningful. Law received six roses, and six heartfelt hugs.  

It’s not realistic to expect all struggling schools to find administrators like Law, who live and breathe their jobs and don’t burn out. Still, parents and educators can take this to heart: One caring adult can make an enormous difference in a student’s life.

Katie Klingsporn is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about Western issues. She lives in central Wyoming, where she reports on education and outdoor recreation for WyoFile.com.

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It is our place of origin and Navajo spiritual traditions are rooted here. Even when we were forcibly removed from our homeland by the federal government’s Army in the 19th century, our spiritual and cultural connection to these lands has never been extinguished.

Utah Navajos still make use of this historic homeland, which is now known as the 1.35-million-acre Bears Ears National Monument, designated by President Obama in 2016. It is where we practice our ceremonies; gather herbs, firewood and cedar poles; hunt for game; rejuvenate our spirits and caretake our sacred places. Because the monument closely involves us, Navajo and other tribes in the area have been pushing for tribal management.

For many years, the Navajo and other local tribes—Hopi, Uintah, Ouray Ute, Zuni and Ute Mountain Ute—worked together to gain federal protection for this land. But what we gained is now threatened by developments that defile and dishonor the cultural and spiritual significance held by Navajo and other Native peoples.

The most recent example is the plan to build a 460-foot telecommunications tower on a parcel of land owned by a Utah state agency, the Trust Lands Administration. The land that would house the tower is in the heart of the Bears Ears National Monument.

If erected, this alien-looking tower will be a spear in the heart of the Bears Ears area. I am also saddened to think there will likely be more inappropriate developments on Utah Trust Lands within Bears Ears, now that the state has derailed a proposed land exchange between the Trust Lands Administration and the federal government.

The land exchange would have helped ensure that Navajo homelands are managed to protect our cultural and spiritual traditions. Now these lands—our heritage—face death by a thousand cuts.

The company placing the telecommunications tower has applied for and received a conditional use permit from San Juan County. But the company must also apply for and receive a variance from the county, because any tower higher than 35 feetis prohibited. So far, it has not applied for a variance.  

The National Park Service opposes the tower and has submitted comments to both the Utah Trust Lands Administration and San Juan County. The federal agency said the tower would blight the viewshed, diminish the area’s dark skies, and harm habitat for several threatened and endangered bird species.

For more than a century my people have had to fight for our rights. In 1868, when Navajos were finally allowed to return from forced exile, we were confined to a reservation south of the San Juan River. It was much reduced in size from our original homeland.

The prime lands higher up near the water and lush vegetation of Bears Ears were denied us. Nevertheless, these lands have always been a part of our cultural traditions, despite a documented history of racial injustices levied against Utah Navajos.

At every level, from county to state to the federal government, that history includes violations of voting rights, education and civil rights. All had to be litigated in federal court. Through all of that, Utah Navajos have fought to conserve and protect the public lands we traditionally used.

These lands need to exist as nature intended—to regenerate traditional plants and provide homes to wildlife that in turn sustain Navajo cultural traditions.

The Utah Trust Lands Administration and the federal government have a chance to do the right thing for Bears Ears. I urge the state of Utah and the federal government to restart discussions about a land exchange.

Otherwise, more out-of-place and inharmonious developments such as this 460-foot blinking tower could come to dominate the Bears Ears landscape.

Mark Maryboy is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He served from 1984 to 2000 as a San Juan County, Utah, commissioner, and from 1990 to 2006, he was a delegate to the Navajo Nation Council.

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For six weeks, nearly 80 people were trapped in a cage, sleeping in tents and hastily constructed hogans. Only meager meals were provided, and the captors sometimes tossed food over the fence.

Like the infamous Japanese American prison camps during World War II, the only crime my relatives committed was belonging to a group of people that the white majority deemed a threat. There was no due process for Japanese Americans or for the Utes.

But while Japanese American incarceration sites, including the Topaz Camp near Delta, Utah, have memorials to the victims, there are no plaques or interpretive displays in Blanding acknowledging the suffering my ancestors endured.

In fact, the events that led up to their imprisonment are best known by misleading names like the “Posey War” and the “Last Indian Uprising.” My ancestor, William Posey, was a leader in the Anikanuche Band who continued traditional hunting across the vast Canyonlands and Bears Ears region into the 1920s, long after many other Indigenous people had been forced onto reservations.

On March 19, 1923, two Ute men were convicted for the alleged raiding of a shepherd’s camp. After an altercation with the San Juan County sheriff, the two men fled and joined their families.

They escaped over Comb Ridge into what is now Bears Ears National Monument. A posse of 50 armed white settlers pursued the Ute people on horseback and in a Model-T Ford. County commissioners also requested an airplane equipped with WWI bombs for use in the chase. Before a plane arrived, the posse found the families, forced them into trucks at gunpoint, then transported them to the barbed-wire stockade in Blanding.

I tell this story because the jailing of Ute people 101 years ago had devastating consequences for my community and healing is necessary even today.

Two Ute men were murdered, including Posey. Ute children were among those shipped to Indian Boarding Schools, separating families and cutting off traditional teachings. As a condition of release, prisoners in the camp had to sign allotment papers for small parcels of land that relinquished their claims to the large Ute reservation that had once been proposed for nearly all of San Juan County.

These events were tragic but they were not a “war” or an “uprising.” Like the Long Walk of the Diné people in 1864, or the Trail of Tears that began in the 1830s, my Anikanuche ancestors were subjected to brutal settler violence in Utah, which had no similarities to a war fought between two nations’ militaries.

Despite these injustices, my people carry on what we call a Legacy of Resilience, and last year the Ute Mountain Ute community of White Mesa began telling our side of the story for the first time.

I was selected to direct the 100 Years of Silence project, and I’ve been working with elders, historians and artists to facilitate healing. We’ve hosted many meetings to listen to community members talk about this history. Seven local artists produced pieces now on display at The Leonardo Museum of Creativity and Innovation in Salt Lake City until May 28. On March 23, we hosted a public launch for the project with presentations from 18 Ute Tribal members.

Throughout the process, I’ve been inspired by the courage and wisdom of my community. Our collective effort aims to end a century of silence to usher in an era of recognition and empowerment for all sides.

As the 101st anniversary of the Anikanuche incarceration drew to a close last month, we hoped Utahns would begin to acknowledge the events of 1923. We ask that those awful weeks no longer be referred to as the “Posey War,” a term based on misinformation that spread as the events unfolded. The 100 Years of Silence project is currently seeking input from the White Mesa community to rename this series of traumatic events.

Perhaps one day, a memorial could be installed on the site of the incarceration camp that is near the historic bank building that still stands in Blanding. As the Ute scholar Forrest Cuch reminded us at the anniversary, healing cannot occur until the truth is known and accepted.

Shaun Ketchum Jr is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about the West. He directs the 100 Years of Silence project and is a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

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More than 100 years ago, the United States gave my great-great grandparents and their children, cousins and friends, around 30 Jewish families, free land in the West under the Homestead Act.

All of the recently arrived immigrants spoke Yiddish; most escaped Russia with their lives but less so their livelihoods. These federal homesteads of 160-acre parcels were theirs to keep if they could turn wild prairie into farmland.

My family told their children that owning land in South Dakota made them feel like real Americans. Coming from Russia where Jews weren’t allowed to own land, their ranch on Jew Flats allowed my ancestors to shake off their suspect immigrant status.

The land also had serious economic impact. Between 1908 and 1970, when my grandmother and her sisters sold the last chunk of Jew Flats, my ancestors took out $1.1 million in mortgages, in today’s value, on their free land. With that money, they were able to start other businesses, buy more land and move away.

Yet this land that paved my family’s pathway to the middle class came at great cost to the Lakota. Throughout the second half of the 19th century, the United States signed treaties with the Lakota Nation reserving tens of thousands of acres in the Dakotas —in perpetuity—for the Lakota Nation.

But when the railroad companies, the largest corporations of their time, wanted to connect a line between California and the East Coast, promises made became promises broken. By 1908, when my ancestors were planting their first crop, Congress had taken or stolen around 98% of the land that an 1851 Treaty said would always be for the Lakota.

To attempt to further eradicate Native American connection to the land, the United States made it illegal for Native Nations like the Lakota to practice their religion, culture and speak their language. Lakota children were taken from their parents, sometimes forcibly or under threat of jail time, to be educated in boarding schools that would convert them to Christianity. These schools taught an “industrial education” training Native children for a trade that didn’t rely on land.

None other than Adolf Hitler was inspired by this American model of dispossession. When crafting laws to diminish the rights of European Jews, Nazi lawyers studied U.S. laws. Hitler not only admired American reservations, which he equated to cages, but he publicly praised the efficiency of America’s attempts to exterminate its Indigenous populations.

“Your people and our people went through the same thing,” Doug White Bull, a Lakota elder and former teacher told me. “But our people had a holocaust that started 400 years ago. Americans condemn Hitler, which you should… but at the same time, they should condemn themselves.”

Unlike Germany, which has grappled (albeit imperfectly) with its genocidal past, the United States has made little efforts to reconcile its thefts from Indigenous people. Yet filling this vacuum of federal leadership are efforts at the local level.

Just recently, the Quaker church paid one Alaska Native community $93,000 in reparations, the amount the federal government had paid the church to forcibly assimilate their ancestors. Throughout the country, other churches have returned land to Native Nations. And in some cities, residents pay voluntary land taxes to the Native Nations that originally lived there.

Following the guidance of Lakota elders, my family has started a fund at the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, a Native-led nonprofit that has spent decades helping Native Nations buy and reclaim their traditional lands. I’ve set our fundraising goal at $1.1 million, the amount we received in mortgages on our free land. Anyone can donate and many people have.

Indigenous elders have taught me that our job in life is to be a good ancestor, to act in a way that doesn’t create a mess for our children or grandchildren to clean up. For me, for my family, attempting to acknowledge and own the damage that was done to the Lakota—at great benefit to us—is a small step towards ending this cycle of harm.

Rebecca Clarren is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. An award-winning journalist about the American West, her latest book is The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota and an American Inheritance (Viking Penguin).

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