Breathing Healing into the Banks of Sand Creek
Denial feeds genocide. Stop denying. Start healing.
Breathing Healing into the Banks of Sand Creek emerged out of a multi-year project of social engagement and artistic development addressing the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre as history-into-present that defines both Indigenous and non-Indigenous existence in the state of Colorado today – a critical moment in the 500-year genocide, forced removal, and ongoing systemic oppression of Native Americans perpetrated by the federal government and American people.
The project began in 2021 with conversations between Cheyenne artist-activist Cinnamon Kills First and Control Group artistic director Patrick Mueller, exploring how they could align and combine their creative practices and social justice goals. In 2022 it expanded to include activist-historians Bill TallBull (Cheyenne, member of TallBull Memorial Council) and Laurie Rugenstein (Indigenous Allies and Right Relationship Boulder).
In 2023 it expanded again, into public dialogues with Native and non-Native communities. In 2024 it manifested a series of artistic-educational-spiritual experiences, as an immersive expedition into the White history-into-present of the Sand Creek Massacre.
The expeditionary live performances from May 2-19, 2024 focused on the White history of the Sand Creek Massacre, embedded in sites across the Denver-Boulder area. Speaking primarily to non-Native audiences, this work offered embodied experiences of this history, the policies and mentalities that drove it, and the ways it continues to define our present situation as Coloradans. It offered healing for the trauma created by the massacre on the perpetrators and their descendants – not just their blood kin, but all of us whose lives and thriving are built on this pivotal moment in the genocide and removal of this area’s original inhabitants.
To balance the White-focused address of these performances, we also created a range of complementary Breathing Healing… programming, including:
public dialogues and healing practices with Indigenous, non-Indigenous, and mixed groups (April-October 2023).
full-day bus trips for Indigenous participants to the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site in Southeast Colorado (June 1-2, 2024).
a mobile exhibit installed in Control Group’s bus, intended for Native and non-Native audiences, that will pop up across Colorado and elsewhere, August 2024 - October 2025.
Throughout this process and across all of the work’s manifestations, we will advocate for internal healing and communal action focused on education, Land Back, and other Indigenous equity initiatives.
Press and Audience Testimonials
This isn’t just history, it’s the present.
It’s not just Native history, it belongs to every person who resides on this land today.
This trauma isn’t over. It’s our job to heal it, within ourselves and each other.
The 2023 version of Breathing Healing… is an immersive land-based learning experience sharing the history-into-present of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre – the deadliest day in Colorado history – and the policies and mentalities that led to it.
Control Group’s Breathing Healing Bus traveled to 5 various Denver sites where this history lives. Embodied participatory performance at each site invited audiences into sensory and emotional experiences of history and its ongoing effects in the present. During the bus rides, we participated in internal somatic and visualization practices aimed at healing wounds created by and borne by the White culture that perpetrated this atrocity. Through this process of learning and healing this traumatic history, we’ll find new ways to invest collaboratively in an equitable future together.
Breathing Healing into the Banks of Sand Creek ran from May 2nd-19th, 2024.
Breathing Healing… marks a vibrant evolution of Control Group’s collaborative, socially-invested art-making practice. It connects arts, education, and healing through embodied, participatory, land-based experiences, elevating our fundamental goal of engendering concrete, durable transformations within our audience/participant communities and the world we live in.
Cinnamon Kills First (they/she) is a word warrior from the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana. With a Rez education from home and two Ivy League degrees, they are a cross-cultural communicator who helps bridge the gap between Indian Country and the rest of the world. As a public speaker, Cinnamon weaves hard truths together with somatic literacy to create reckoning in the body of those in her audiences, in order to make way for healing.
As co-creator of Breaths Together for a Change (BTC), Cinnamon helped successfully pilot a yearlong, Indigenous-centric anti-racist metasomatic and meditation-based healing model that was specifically designed to decolonize White bodies. The BTC model targets faulty alarms in the nervous system and treats racism as a disease in the body. Cinnamon’s team submitted a science poster to the 2021 International Meditation Festival at Dongkuk University in Seoul, Korea and earned second prize.
Cinnamon is currently leading a counterpart experience for Indigenous people, which she rebranded as Oníya Wicózani (“Breathing + Healing” in Lakhota). Cinnamon will spend her life fighting and healing from White Supremacy, as many of her warrior ancestors have before her.
Cinnamon received their BA and MALS from Dartmouth College and their MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop where they studied fiction. They’ve produced three documentaries, have three children’s books with Scholastic, and a series publishing soon with Mayo Clinic Press.
Bill Tall Bull (he/him) is a Management Analyst with the Department of the Interior National Park Service and works in the Regional Office in Lakewood, Colorado. Bill assists with managing the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program and the National Historic Landmark program.
Outside of the Park Service, Bill volunteers his time with the Tall Bull Memorial Council. The Council works with the local Indigenous Community, so they have a place to come together for ceremonies and celebrations. The goal of the Council is to bring awareness and help bridge the educational gap of American Indians. Bill is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He lives in Sheridan, Colorado and for fun he enjoys golfing and mountain biking.
Silen Wellington (they/he) is a sculptor of sound, artist of people, storyteller, and genderqueer shapeshifter, among other things. They make art as act of service, healing, disruption and magic, weaving together disciplines of poetry, acoustic sound, electronics, ritual, and performance art. They were a 2022-2023 American Opera Initiative composer with the Kennedy Center, a 2022 Bouman Fellow and a 2019 SEAMUS Electroacoustic Allen Strange Award recipient. Internationally performed from Hyderabad, India to Invercargill, Aotearoa New Zealand, they have collaborated with ensembles & organizations such as Ars Nova Singers, Denver’s Playground Ensemble, Resonance Women’s Chorus, Phoenix: Colorado’s Transgender Community Choir, Luster Productions, Control Group Productions, and Minneapolis' Open Flame Theatre. Their work has been performed in gardens whispering delightful fae dances to the trans-ancestors that escape definition, featured boys in dresses next to saxophones, unveiled prescription label collages amid chaotic soundscapes of dysphoria, danced nonbinary shadow puppets behind sheets of rainbow light, and given permission to intramuscular testosterone injections under expansive life-giving harmonics. Outside of the arts world, they direct a nonprofit in Northern Colorado called the Yarrow Collective, offering mental health peer support run by people with lived experience. Besides writing music & community organizing, they enjoy writing poetry, harvesting stories, unhinged-unfettered-unapologetic dance, and falling in love. You can listen to more of their work at: SilenWellington.com and follow them on Instagram: @silen_creature.
Diego Florez Arroyo (he/him) is a full time poet, artist, and musician. Diego has worked on and produced a variety of projects. As a multi-instrumentalist, writer, and composer, Diego is a founding member of the Denver band, Los Mocochetes; he regularly performs with Art Compost and Word Mechanics, and is also a part of a Soul Jazz Rock Trio called, “The Cosmosmiths”.
Earlier this year, he opened an art installation and exhibit at the Alto Gallery of RiNo Art Park, called "Mensajes Mestizos" (messages from the mixed ones),focusing on the spectrum of diversity among Chicano and Mexicano peoples along the American southwest, and northern Mexican region, before and after the establishment of colonial borders.
Patrick Mueller (he/him) is a third-generation non-Native White Coloradan living three blocks from his childhood home on the unceded land of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Ute.
He founded Control Group Productions in 2008. Anchored in his experience as a dance-based performer in Europe and New York, he has cultivated a multidisciplinary creative practice gathered around the creation of Expeditionary Performance works – events that bring audiences into motion together, on literal/figurative journeys through resonant real-world sites and urgent social topics. Increasingly, he has come to understand Control Group as a social project of creating change within his local arts scene and broader Front Range community.
Patrick has performed with Ben J. Riepe Kompanie (DE), Mancopy Danse Kompagni (DK), Troika Ranch Dance Theatre (NY), and in Colorado with Wild Heart Dance and in Third Rail Project’s Sweet & Lucky at the Denver Center. He has created commissioned works for Open Dance Project (TX) and Dance Initiative Carbondale (CO), and provided choreography and collaboration on The Wild Party (DCPA) and Futurity (Aurora Fox Arts Center).
Patrick has served as an Executive Producer for Cuauhtémoczin, Sojourners Project: Busing, and other Control Group Artist Services Program presentations. He regularly provides lighting design and technical direction for projects, and has served as facilities manager for several venues.
Kristine Whittle (she/her) lives with her husband Patrick and 10yr old kiddo Levi near the foothills of the Rockies. Their home sits on the stolen homelands of the Hinóno’éí and Tsitsistas nations, along with the Nuciu and many other Indigenous nations, a fact she is grappling with. Kristine facilitates somatic-based healing through bodywork, movement & yoga practices. She is deeply committed to healing through her work as a collaborator and performer with Control Group Productions, of which she was a founding member in 2009. Kristine offers her whole self to Breathing Healing into the Banks of Sand Creek. May this work help us see clearly, mend broken hearts, and re-affirm our commitment to the right relationship with the earth and all of her inhabitants. www.restorativetherapies.org
Mickey Dick (they/them) is a historian focused on the political histories of science, colonization, labor, and queerness. Graduating from The New School in 2022, Breathing Healing into the Banks of Sand Creek is their debut as a professional historical researcher. Previous research has included their Bachelor’s thesis on gendered relations to labor in the Communist Party of the United States of America and what they coined as ʻsocial martyrdom theory,’ Tennessee’s racist roots as the founding place of the Ku Klux Klan and The United Daughters of the Confederacy, social immobilities in toxic fenceline zones, historical tracking of queer culture and politics through Alison’s Bechdel’s comic strip collection Dykes to Watch Out For, the role of queercore music in uplifting queer and sexual violence survivor communities, and much more.
George Delaney (he/they) is a trans movement practitioner, researcher, artist, and teacher. He was born and raised in, and is currently based out of the unceded land of the Nuche, Tsis tsis'tas, and Hinono'ei Peoples, otherwise known as Denver, CO.
LEAD ARTISTIC TEAM
Direction by Cinnamon Kills First & Patrick Mueller
Project leads: Bill Tallbull, Cinnamon Kills First, Laurie Rugenstein, & Patrick Mueller
Performed by Bill Tallbull, Cinnamon Kills First, David Ortalano, Kristine Whittle, Laurie Rugenstein, & Patrick Mueller
Stage Managed by Lainey Martin
Bus Design by Diego Florez-Arroyo
Costume Design by Erika Daun
Dramaturgy by Mickey Dick
Sound Design by Silen Wellington
Production Management by George Delaney
Additional aid from Krista Brown
Breathing Healing into the Banks of Sand Creek is made possible through support from the SCFD Arapahoe County; the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; Colorado Creative Industries; Community First Foundation, and many generous individuals.
Laurie Rugenstein (she/her) is the descendant of northern European ancestors, primarily German and English, who came to what is now the United States in the 1600-1700s. They settled in what is now New England, upstate New York, and the Ohio River Valley on land that was taken from many Native Peoples of these areas. Laurie grew up on Leni Lenape land in southern New Jersey. She came to Colorado in the late 1980s and now lives on land that was stolen from the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Ute people.
Laurie developed and chaired a music therapy masters degree program at Naropa University and served as a music therapist with hospice for over 20 years. Through her connection with Tommy Woon, a somatic therapist and DEI leader at Naropa, she was invited to participate in a year-long pilot program of Breaths Together for Change (BTC) that uses guided somatic meditations to work on undoing implicit racism that exists in White bodies. Through this work she met Cinnamon Kills First, co-creator of BTC, which eventually led to connecting with Control Group Productions.
Laurie is member of Right Relationships Boulder where she is co-facilitator of the Education & Schools Group, working to get accurate information about Native Peoples taught in the Boulder Valley Public Schools. She is also a member Indigenous Allies, working to raise awareness of issues facing Native Peoples and building bridges between Natives and non-Natives.
David Ortolano brings together unique training in ritual theater with live performance and public events to develop a kind of social magic that crosses political lines and engages people in culturally competent dialogues through art and performance. His collaborative approach is strongly influenced by training in World Dance forms, Balinese Art and Culture, West African Drum & Dance, Action Theater, Mudra Theater, Music Composition, Native American Arts and Traditions and Lecoq Physical Theater. David has a broad range of professional experience in event design, performance, events leadership, business development and nonprofit management. His expertise covers a wide spectrum of industries including Music, Dance, Live Theater, Media, Film and Television production. He is the founder and Executive Director at the Boulder International Fringe Festival, and served as arts faculty and executive staff at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He is also a founding member of Band of Toughs: a theater collaboratory, an award winning Boulder/Denver based physical theater company.
Richard Sauer (he/him) has his BFA in film and theatre from CU. This will be his 3rd full project with Control Group Productions and he is excited for the experience. Richard also works with Phamaly Theatre Company and Colorado Ballet. This show is important because it is a part of Colorado history that should be recognized and acknowledged. Richard wants to thank his friends and family for their support. Also a special thanks to his partner Emma for her love and support.