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.”…