Several weeks ago, Pina Leon-Gonzalez stood before her hosts on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and felt an almost overwhelming rush of emotion at the request — and the distinct honor — that she deliver a blessing before the evening meal.
Leon-Gonzalez, 69, had traveled to the reservation from Longmont as one of 20 seniors selected to be part of an “elder exchange” with members of the Northern Arapaho Tribe. As she often finds when emotion takes hold, her words tumbled out in Spanish.
“I said thank you to the Creator for giving us the opportunity to be together with them, and then I thanked the people that cooked the meal for us,” Leon-Gonzalez recounted, noting that her adult daughter stepped in to translate. “I said I considered them not only friends, but family.”
A Colorado Sun series. Read more.Colorado is getting older, rapidly. Are we prepared? We’re taking a look at how these shifting demographics are affecting housing, the workforce and quality of life, and whether Colorado has the services needed for people to age in place.
Follow alongHer invocation was answered by the elements: a peal of thunder, followed by a brief but intense rain shower — signs, her hosts said, that her blessing was strong, had been accepted and triggered tears of happiness.
Rainbows added the finishing touch.
“I’m not afraid to try new things,” said Leon-Gonzalez, who a few months earlier had helped host Northern Arapaho elders in Longmont. “But I was nervous because of the different cultures. Even with that, though, I wanted to learn more.”
Her embrace — both literally and figuratively — of tribal elders echoed the enthusiastic response among Longmont seniors who participated in an activity that adds another variation to an already groundbreaking Sister Cities arrangement with the reservation. Organizers believe the elder exchange could be the first such cultural program anywhere — a generational twist on more prevalent youth exchanges that the city and the tribe have sponsored over the past four years.
(In March, nearby Broomfield launched a Sister Cities relationship with Cheyenne and Southern Arapaho tribes based in Oklahoma.)
The Longmont Senior Center, which already offers monthly cultural enrichment programs thanks to donations from the nonprofit fundraising arm Friends of the Longmont Senior Center, also hosted an annual, daylong Native American Heritage Month celebration last November that drew an estimated 500 people. It built on that foundation by welcoming Northern Arapaho elders to Longmont for a four-day visit in March, followed by a four-day excursion in July to the Wind River Reservation.
“It’s an opportunity to welcome our Northern Arapaho elders home,” said Ronnie Maynes, Longmont’s senior services manager, “learn each other’s cultures, and then go to the reservation and learn on their land.”
Even on short notice — the exchange came together in a matter of weeks — the opportunity immediately generated more than 40 applications that had to be pared down to 20 participants. The response reflected a demographic issue in microcosm: a rising tide of Colorado seniors and the challenge of providing the resources to serve them.
Colorado’s population is aging at the third-fastest rate in the country, with more than 25% of its residents projected to be over age 60 by 2050. In Boulder County, the over-60 population stood at 73,526 in July 2023 but is expected to spike to 111,685 by the year 2050 — nearly a 52% increase. The over-80 population is projected to jump 220% by 2050, from under 11,000 to nearly 35,000, according to 2024 Aging Well in Boulder County data.
A recent wave of remodeling put a fresh face on the senior center, but Maynes says he’s beginning to work with the Friends nonprofit in the hope they can begin fundraising for expansion. Hiring more resource specialists would reduce waiting lists that can run as long as six weeks. But for now, the center aims to serve more clients with expanded weekday hours and a Saturday option as well.
“We’re just trying to be proactive instead of reactive,” he said. “We’re seeing these increases in our programs and our clients, and we need more staff and more space. So we’re trying to get ahead of it as much as possible.”
Maynes said seniors have been coming to the Longmont center in rapidly increasing numbers to take advantage of more than 1,900 recreation programs in 2024 that served 36,844 total participants. But the center also offers support services ranging from counseling to help filling out forms for things like housing, insurance or Medicaid to assistance for qualified seniors who need eyeglasses or hearing aids.
The center takes particular pride in its day trips — last year it offered 134 outings to sports and cultural events as well as tours, festivals and museums that served over 2,400 participants. But it couldn’t keep pace with the demand. Some seniors got only as far as a waitlist and missed the opportunity.
Part of the problem stemmed from the fact that day trips have proved so popular that the interest eventually surpassed the capacity of the center’s two 15-passenger buses. Charters were an option for particularly in-demand trips, but that would increase the cost to seniors. So Maynes took his dilemma to the Friends, and they came through with two new vehicles this year, expanding the center’s fleet to four.
The new rides arrived in time to allow the participants in the elder exchange to break them in last month on the scenic six-hour drive to the Wind River Reservation.
Pina Leon-Gonzalez of Longmont, right, delivers a prayer at the request of her Northern Arapaho hosts or the evening meal at the elder exchange on the Wind River Reservation in July. Her daughter, Jenny Diaz-Leon, translated the prayer, which Leon-Gonzalez spoke in Spanish. (Photo courtesy of Ronnie Maynes)An early test for Sister Cities concept
In 2018, then-newly elected Longmont Mayor Brian Bagley experienced a flash of inspiration that connected two disparate thoughts and pointed him toward an unconventional concept. While scrolling social media, he had seen a story that noted the sovereign status of Native American reservations. In a meeting a few days later, someone mentioned Sister Cities, an Eisenhower-era program for international cultural exchanges that Longmont had embraced 30 years earlier.
The city forged its first connection with Chino, Japan, followed a few years later by Ciudad Guzman, Mexico. If Indigenous nations are sovereign, Bagley wondered, why not explore the possibility of an “international” Sister City relationship with a tribe?
From there, it wasn’t long before Bagley reached out to the Wind River Reservation, home to the Northern Arapaho Tribe on 2.2 million acres of diverse Wyoming landscape. Of course, long before that the tribe had called much of Colorado’s Front Range its home, including the land where Longmont stands.
The first conversations were a little awkward. Understandably, the tribe had trust issues. What did Longmont really want? But Bagley, enlisting the help of cultural liaisons, earnestly persisted — even though, he said, many people had counseled against it, figuring the overtures might not be well received.
“You have to understand that nobody thought that this would work,” recalled Bagley, who after his stint as mayor returned to the law firm he manages. “In the beginning, city council refused to get on board with it. Sister Cities International told us not to do it. And I did it anyway, because I just knew it would work.”
Talks with the Northern Arapaho eventually resulted in a three-day conference at the Wind River Reservation. The Longmont contingent needed cultural guidance, and Bagley found it in Ray Ramirez, a local man whose expertise gleaned from many years working in various capacities within the Native American community in Arizona could help navigate unfamiliar tribal protocols.
(Carmel Zucker, Special to The Colorado Sun)I was struck by their generosity of spirit, the magnificent forgiveness for what was perpetrated on their people, not just then, but for the past 150 years.
— John Higgins, 79, Longmont participant in the elder exchange:
Along with representatives from the city, Bagley came bearing gifts: receipts for two breeding buffaloes that would be delivered at a later date.
He told the tribe he would be guided by two rules. First, he would never ask for anything but friendship. Second, he would never break his word. The Northern Arapaho had some rules of their own, including that their response to the proposal would proceed according to prescribed tradition.
That meant meeting with tribal elders.
Ramirez warned the mayor that he would be tested. That moment came about a half hour into the conversation. The elders turned away and spoke to each other in the Arapaho language. They laughed. Talked some more. Laughed again. Finally, they told Bagley that they were going to give him an Indian name, and pronounced it in their native tongue.
The mayor asked the elders its meaning.
“White man’s eagle,” they told him.
After a moment, he bit: “What is a white man’s eagle?”
“A chicken.” The elders laughed, watching closely to see if Bagley would roll with the joke or take offense.
“He just laughed and laughed and laughed,” Ramirez recalled. “And that’s when I said, ‘Oh, boy, you passed,’ because it’s important to laugh at yourself. That’s part of negotiating, that’s part of building relationships.”
Today, even with his term as mayor behind him, Bagley still maintains close relationships that grew out of those early meetings.
“I was mayor down here,” he said, “but that doesn’t carry any weight up there. So when they tested me, I just kind of looked at it as a rite of passage. I figured that they wouldn’t be doing that if they didn’t want me to be their friend. So I just embraced it.”
Northern Arapaho tribal members enjoy playing Loteria, a Mexican bingo game, with their Longmont hosts in March at the Longmont Senior Center during an elder exchange. (Photo courtesy of Ronnie Maynes)Angst over an elder exchange
The Sister City relationship between Longmont and the Northern Arapaho officially launched Sept. 18, 2021, and proceeded with a succession of student exchanges, as fostering youth interaction has always been central to the concept. But three years ago, when city officials visited the Wind River Reservation to meet with tribal representatives, Maynes broached another novel idea.
Would there be interest in working toward an elder exchange? The idea was definitely on brand for Longmont, whose senior center puts on a dozen cultural enrichment programs every year, including the Native American Heritage Month celebration.
Last January, tribal leadership called to propose a two-part exchange. It would start with a four-day visit by Northern Arapaho elders to Longmont. Then, in July, a group of Longmont seniors would make the bus trip to Wyoming to spend four days on the reservation.
Despite the compressed timeline, funding was arranged through the city and the nonprofit Friends. Meanwhile, the senior center sent out applications to more than 300 registered attendees for a previous Native American cultural enrichment program, from which it selected the 20 participants who could commit to attending both exchanges.
After the selection process, the center provided workshops to help participants understand Northern Arapaho history and what they’ve endured as a tribe, “so we’re not going into this relationship building blind,” Maynes said. Ray and Carmen Ramirez were part of that process, as they had been for youth exchanges, doing presentations on topics ranging from the Native American boarding schools that sought to erase Indigenous culture to simply examining long-held biases.
(Carmel Zucker, Special to The Colorado Sun)That part was really life-changing, in terms of the level of deep, committed relationships that we were able to develop in a relatively short period of time.
— Karen Roney, 69, Longmont participant, on friendships forged in the elder exchange
But elders presented a different dynamic.
“For youth, when you talk about something like the boarding schools, that seems like history and very far away,” Carmen said. “When you think about our elders, that’s their lived experience. That proximity of history is much closer.
“Think about if you’re 60, 70, 80 years old,” she added, “and all of a sudden you’re not just confronted with your biases, but you have the opportunity for those biases to be challenged, changed or maybe healed.”
For Leon-Gonzalez, that opportunity tapped into her natural curiosity. She wanted to explore what she suspected were similarities between her Latino heritage and Native American culture. Her experience as a volunteer preparing meals for the youth exchanges over the last four years had piqued her interest, and the elder exchange seemed like the next logical step — although not without anxiety.
“With the kids, it’s so easy,” she said. “You just have to be nice to them and just love them and you’re OK. So when the exchange came, I was really nervous about it, nervous about making a mistake or saying the wrong word or anything that can go wrong and make it not a nice experience for them. So I was a little worried.”
Wind River elders harbored their own anxieties, said Sherry Blackburn, director of the Northern Arapaho senior centers.
Even in towns neighboring the reservation, like Riverton and Lander, tribal people experience hostility, she explained. What awaited them in Longmont?
“We didn’t know what to expect, how it was going to be down there, and how the people were going to treat us,” Blackburn said. “And so I think we were all filled with a little bit of trepidation and apprehensive about things.”
Visiting Longmont seniors listen to Art Lawson, Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes Director of Tribal Fish and Game, on a Circle Ridge Tour during the elder exchange visit in July to the Wind River Reservation. (Photo courtesy of Carolyn Kerr)Breaking the ice
For all the cultural preparation and angst about how this communion would shake out, it didn’t take long for the gathering to settle into comfortable conversation, said John Higgins, 79, a retired general contractor. Like Leon-Gonzalez, he approached the meeting with some reticence and concern over how the ice would be broken, and what individuals from the two groups would find to talk about.
“But over time,” Higgins said, “it was like every group. What do you talk about? You talk about kids, you talk about grandkids, you talk about life, and there starts to be this commonality. And eventually friendships begin to form, bonds begin to form.”
Among 16 visiting Northern Arapaho tribal participants and family members, the arrival also marked a welcome experience.
“We were met with warmth and hospitality, and they just made us feel totally welcome when we got to Longmont,” Blackburn said. “I was so surprised at their hospitality and how generous they were with everything — with their time and with their food and with all of their efforts. It was really a heartwarming experience.”
They broke bread — and broke the ice — at a “welcome home” dinner. They chatted. They hung out and played pool at the Longmont Senior Center and also worked together on a quilt. They attended the Denver March Pow Wow together and embarked on a field trip to History Colorado’s Sand Creek Massacre exhibit.
That display can be a moving experience for any visitor. But as the Longmont seniors discovered, witnessing the story of Sand Creek with tribal members whose ancestors lived and died during the massacre helped them understand it with a new perspective.
“It was a quiet time, and all of us had our own reflections about that exhibition and what that meant,” said Karen Roney, 69. “It was about learning, understanding and really reflection for each one of us.”
For some, that reflection proved overwhelming.
“I saw some of the videos, I heard some of the audios, and I couldn’t stop crying — really crying, crying, crying, because that was a terrible thing that happened,” Leon-Gonzalez said. “And maybe that’s one of the things that I was nervous about, that they have been so hurt.”
Higgins said he was aware of Sand Creek’s history and the tribes’ efforts just to have it called what it was — a “massacre,” not a “battle.” On a late November morning in 1864, American troops killed around 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people, most of them women, children and the elderly, before returning a day later to commit atrocities on the dead.
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SUBSCRIBEEven months after the trip to the museum, Higgins’ voice quavered as he described the experience.
“It was moving for me, just the exhibit by itself, but to be there with people whose ancestors had been there, and to sit in this one room where they had videos playing of people relating to it …” he said, pausing to compose himself. “I was struck by their generosity of spirit, the magnificent forgiveness for what was perpetrated on their people, not just then, but for the past 150 years.”
He added that he never felt the exchange came with expectations of recrimination or apology — only an openness to the experience.
“I feel like there wasn’t an agenda,” he said. “I didn’t feel like there was any kind of … anything other than an opportunity to meet people from a different culture and see where it goes.”
It went in an unanticipated direction when one of the visitors, while offering a prayer before a meal, shared that she’d recently lost a son. Higgins was struck by her vulnerability and her trust that she could share such a personal experience with her new friends — in part because, many years ago, he and his wife, Karen, also lost a son.
Across cultures, grief created a connection. Not in the sense of offering advice or platitudes — Higgins already knew those do nothing to relieve the pain. Only in quiet understanding that they’d suffered the same kind of loss years earlier.
“I said that to her, and then I hugged her,” he recalled. “And we never talked about it again.”
After a brief thunderstorm, multiple rainbows appeared on the Wind River Reservation on a July evening during an elder exchange between visiting Longmont seniors and Northern Arapaho residents. (Photo courtesy of Brandy Queen)The return trip — and rainbows
Leon-Gonzalez felt a vibe of anticipation about the trip to the Wind River Reservation, although she also battled nerves all over again.
The bus wound its way north along scenic U.S. 287, called Main Street in downtown Longmont before it meanders across rolling landscape as a literal and metaphorical through line to the reservation — routing past Laramie and Rawlins and, after a quick turn onto Wyoming 135, the homestretch into west-central Wyoming.
But her anxiety was soothed by the prospect of learning more about her Northern Arapaho friends — even though she knew her arthritis, which requires her to walk with a cane, would make the going slow and sometimes painful.
“I can barely walk, and I didn’t mind,” she said. “I knew I will be slow, I will need help. But I wanted to do everything. And I did everything.”
The drive from Longmont to Wind River mapembeds.comThere was plenty on the agenda. Visits to the 300,000-acre Arapaho Ranch, the hot springs in Thermopolis, a burgeoning buffalo ranch — as well as gatherings for bingo and barbecue — eventually would lead to a powwow and performance of an “honor song” for the visitors.
“We tried our best to make them comfortable,” Blackburn said, “because they really did a tremendous job hosting us, and I just wanted to make sure that we reciprocated in the same manner. And so I was a little anxious about it. But everything went well.”
The first order of business was to renew acquaintances. Gone was the hesitance that marked the first meeting in Longmont. In its place was a welcome that the visitors likened more to an overdue reunion.
“When we got there, they were already waiting for us,” Leon-Gonzalez said. “So seeing familiar faces there, we rushed to hug them, and they were rushing to hug us. And suddenly everybody was hugging everybody.”
“It’s just like going back to family,” Higgins added. “It felt like I’d known them for years.”
Roney agreed, describing a level of friendship fortified by compassion and love — even though the relationships had been forged in just four days in March.
“That part was really life-changing,” she said, “in terms of the level of deep, committed relationships that we were able to develop in a relatively short period of time.”
Leon-Gonzalez stayed behind during one group outing and did something she loves for people she’d come to love: cook. At the reservation’s senior center, she prepared a “Mexican spaghetti” with peppers.
“It was my way of showing my appreciation and saying thank you for all this experience,” she said. “I was cooking with so much joy, because it was for them. If you give something from the heart, it’s going to come back from the heart.”
Her hosts later presented her with a traditional shawl as a token of appreciation.
Higgins, who grew up in Hawaii, has always had an affinity for sunsets. On the reservation, he watched the sun slowly dip below the Wyoming horizon almost every night and felt a powerful sense of deja vu, a feeling that he’d only previously experienced on the islands.
(Carmel Zucker, Special to The Colorado Sun)So seeing familiar faces there, we rushed to hug them, and they were rushing to hug us. And suddenly everybody was hugging everybody.
— Pina Leon-Gonzalez, 69, of Longmont, on the group’s arrival at the Wind River Reservation
“It was just this sense of, ‘I’ve been here before,’” he said. “That this is a place worth being connected to. And that’s pretty magnificent.”tf
On an interpersonal level, he echoed other participants in the sense that he returned home feeling that the two groups of elders shared much in common. And that the experience carried value for anyone, regardless of age.
“It was life-altering in a way that was subtle and profound,” he said. “My wife asked me: In one word, tell me what your experience was. I said, ‘Connection.’ For me, definitely a sense of being connected.”
Blackburn said the tribal participants came to the same conclusion, sealed when Leon-Gonzalez delivered her prayer at the evening meal and the clouds rumbled their approval and nature painted colorful arcs across the sky.
“I’ve seen two rainbows, but never three,” Blackburn said. “And so that was kind of symbolic to me. I think it symbolized new beginnings — and new friendships for all of us.”
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