Click the link to read the article on The Sopris Sun website (Annalise Grueter). Here’s an excerpt:
November 12, 2025
“If we take care of that water, we know that water is going to take care of us,” stated Lorelei Cloud, who has spent a lifetime advocating for water conservation and access. Cloud, a former vice chairman of the Southern Ute tribe, was also the first tribal member on record to serve on the Colorado Water Conservation Board. On Thursday, Nov. 6, The Arts Campus at Willits (TACAW) hosted Cloud and a fellow trustee of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Colorado, Johnny Le Coq, for a presentation on their respective backgrounds and water conservation work. The event, sponsored by Roaring Fork Conservancy and TNC, was a special installment of the Brooksher Watershed Institute. Lawyer Ramsey Kropf, who has decades of experience in representing Indian water rights cases in the Colorado and Klamath River basins, emceed.
After some brief introductions, Cloud opened the evening by sharing the history of her people. The Roaring Fork Valley is part of ancestral Ute territories. Though the Utes, who referred to themselves as “Nuche,” or “the people,” and called their home the “Shining Mountains,” were seasonally nomadic before the arrival of colonial miners, Cloud shared that her people do not have a traditional migration story as some Indigenous peoples do. What the Nuche have is a creation story that ties them intrinsically to the soaring peaks and waterways of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Cloud explained that the seasonal nomadic moves of the Nuche were not considered to be migration but normal shifts, demonstrating respect and care for the ecosystems…
“We believe that we are one and the same with nature,” Cloud said, elaborating that other species and even elements like water are akin to souls.
