Student Highlight: Sky Roosevelt-Morris - Graduate Student

Published: April 19, 2020

Sky Roosevelt-Morris is a political science graduate student and graduate research associate at CU Denver’s Fourth World Center for the Study of Indigenous Law and Politics. 

In the broader community, Sky is Chair of Denver’s Four Winds Indian Council. As explained on their website, the Four Winds American Indian Council is “an American Indian ‘liberated zone’ located in the heart of Denver, Colorado, in the original territories of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute Nations. By “liberated zone” we mean that Four Winds is a facility where indigenous peoples are free to use the buildings for Native empowerment. Four Winds is one place in Denver where Native people can speak their languages, participate in their ceremonies, strategize and organize for their liberation, and rebuild an empowered community.

“When we talk about decolonization, we’re talking not only about giving land back but about decolonizing our minds and our lives,” explains Sky Roosevelt-Morris.   Read more from Sky, explaining the meaning of Four Winds and decolonization here:  https://www.christiancentury.org/article/sidebar/sky-roosevelt-morris-meaning-four-winds 

Sky’s community work has been recently featured by articles in the Christian Century (see above), and also here:   “A church returns land to American Indians”

https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/church-returns-land-american-indians