Your Voice Matters

1Utah Project is sponsoring a presentation at the Scandinavian Festival Conference at 10 a.m. on Friday, May 27. Emily Olsen, interim director of 1Utah Project, will discuss Utah’s Blackhawk War (1865-67) and the Timpanogos Migration. The Timpanogos people of the Snake-Shoshone Tribe, with bands in modern-day Weber, Salt Lake, Utah, and Sanpete counties, had been able to live peacefully next to Mormon settlements beginning in 1847, but a series of disputes led ultimately to a separation. Utah’s Black Hawk War, 1865-1867, was as much a political strategy on both sides as it was a physical war that resulted in the migration of Natives to the Uinta-Ouray Reservation in Northeastern Utah, where thousands still live today. The relationship between the Mormon pioneers and the Utes was unique from other white/native interactions in many ways, but ultimately the Timpanogos had the same fate as other Native American tribes throughout the American Southwest.

The topic is frequently swept under the rug as it is an ugly part of Utah’s past, but it is important that we remember the story and that we can find peace about it. 1Utah Project would like to help preserve this important history and continue the conversation toward healing.

At 11 a.m., Fiona Robinson-Hill from Sema Hadithi will provide a presentation about the role of the Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Duchesne, Utah. The U.S. 9th Calvary, African-American troops who the natives called Buffalo Soldiers, were sent to northeastern Utah near the confluence of the Duchesne and Uinta Rivers from 1886-1912. They served as law enforcement officers to assure that the Timpanogos and Northern Ute bands who experienced a forced migration from both Utah and Colorado stayed west of the Colorado border and east of the Great Basin. The Buffalo Soldiers built Fort Duchesne including their homes, farms and gardens. They built some of the early infrastructure in the area, including a road and a telegraph line through Nine-Mile Canyon. The soldiers often hunted alongside the natives and created a new community for the reservation.

Emily Olsen is the interim director of 1Utah Project (1utp.org), an organization dedicated to encouraging people of color and other disenfranchised people to vote. It also works to correct disinformation in the media build bridges and make connections with people of color and Utah communities. In addition, Emily is a part-time staff writer at the Sanpete Messenger. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Brigham Young University and a master’s degree in business management from the University of Phoenix. She presently lives in Ogden with her husband Paul.

Fiona Robinson-Hill was born and raised in Salt Lake City but is a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and loves traveling. With both her parents minoring in History at the University of Utah, naturally, she felt drawn to it herself and is slowly, but surely, working on her major. She currently works for Grimm Ghost Tours as a guide, investigator, and historian, but volunteers as a historical researcher for Sema Hadithi, an organization working to collect, preserve, and tell the stories of African Americans in Utah, and the Fort Douglas Military Museum. She lives in downtown Salt Lake City with her husband and two kids.