Native Land Beer Reminds Us Whose Ancestral Land We’re Drinking On

They don’t make Avalanche Ale anymore at the original Breckenridge Brewery in Summit County. Or Vanilla Porter, or any of the other flagships that made the brewery famous. The staff leaves those beers to the production workers where Breck’s flagships are brewed.

Which is good news for Jimmy Walker and his team at the 32-year-old mountain town pub, because it means they are free to brew interesting, unusual and one-off beers – including some of the nationwide benefit and collaboration beers that have supported numerous causes over the past three or four years, like relief for victims of the massive wildfires in California and Australia, and funding for equity and justice issues with the Black Is Beautiful and Brave Noise beers.

“For me, if they give me the green light, I’ll do every one of them,” Walker says, adding that since Breckenridge Brewery is owned by AB InBev, it has a pretty large philanthropy budget.

The latest benefit beer in which Breckenridge is participating is called Native Land IPA, a project from Albuquerque’s Bow & Arrow Brewing designed to remind people that wherever they are, they’re probably drinking beer on the ancestral home of a Native American tribe. Proceeds from sales of the beer are then donated to “Native organizations whose work focuses on ecological stewardship and strengthening Native communities,” the mission statement reads.

“As the first Native woman-owned brewery, we’ve been thinking about how we can make an impact and leverage our platform to make a difference,” it continues. So Bow & Arrow created an IPA recipe, a label and other guidelines that any interested brewer could borrow.

For Breckenridge Brewery, that meant a beer honoring the ancestors of the Mountain Utes, who ranged all over Colorado before being forced onto reservations in the Four Corners area in the late 1800s. By the end of March, Walker believes Breck will have raised $4,000 for the First Nations Development Institute, the same organization that Bow & Arrow is supporting.

Walker has lived in Summit County for 25 years, and says that most people who have been around that long know at least a little about the history of the Mountain Ute tribe, whose ancestors – going back thousands of years – would trek from South Park over Hoosier Pass in the summer and then fish and hunt along the Blue River down into what is now Breckenridge. But for newcomers, he says, it’s “cool to bring this to light. And there is only so much information you can present on the can, so it makes people look it up and learn about it.”

The beer itself is a hazy IPA brewed with Strata, Idaho 7 and New Zealand Cascade hops for an orange, citrusy, tropical character, Walker notes. It’s available on tap and in 16-ounce four-packs only from the brewery’s taproom in Breckenridge and and its brewery campus in Littleton.

At least five other Colorado breweries are participating in the project, including Outer Range, which is also located on the ancestral home of the Mountain Utes, and Westbound & Down and Goldspot breweries, which are on lands where the Cheyenne and Arapaho once lived.

The brewers at Frisco’s Outer Range, which released its beer back in November, met the owners of Bow & Arrow, Shyla Sheppard and Missy Begay, at an event at Finn’s Manor a few years ago and “really hit it off,” says Outer Range co-founder Lee Cleghorn.

“We have since had a great relationship with them, and are inspired by their approach to beer, especially the foraging for beer ingredients local to their brewery. The fact that they are Native American/woman-owned is just an interesting part of a brewery that stands strongly on everything already,” he adds. The two breweries have done other collaborations, as well.