Running
Running to Remember: Ku Stevens
In high school, Ku Stevens became the fastest long-distance runner in the state of Nevada. But he doesn’t run for personal glory. He runs to honor his ancestors and put a spotlight on a dark history.
Distance runner Ku Stevens grew up in a small house on a potholed street on a tiny Indian reservation in Yerington, Nevada, a cowboy town of 3,200 where the main drag still feels very Old West, boasting a Rexall Drug, a steakhouse and a dusty museum honoring local war veterans.
On Ku’s street, the yards were piled high with the tailings from the nearby Anaconda copper mine, so that the soil was too poisoned to sustain much vegetation. When he was in fifth grade, Ku and his friends terrorized their neighbors, playing doorbell ditch and lighting off fireworks. Was petty thuggery his destiny? Possibly. “When you’re a Native American kid,” says Ku, an Indigenous Paiute who recently turned 19, “you’re taught to lose. You’re taught to look at bloody moments in history where your people got killed and think, ‘That could have been me.’ ”
One hot July night during Ku’s mischievous phase, the Yerington police heard exploding firecrackers in the neighborhood. When Ku arrived home after midnight, there were two cruisers waiting for him in the driveway. He says his mother grounded him for the rest of the summer.
Sequestered in his bedroom, Ku had time to think. He recognized the racial pain he felt, living in a town where white kids threw slurs at Native Americans and where he’d been socially pressured, in fourth grade, into cutting off his long black hair. He also thought about how sometimes he’d felt deeply rooted, being Native. He remembered sitting in his family’s sweat lodge. He remembered foraging the high desert for buckberries and pine nuts with his father, Delmar, and watching his dad take part in a sundance. Several times, Delmar fasted and went without water for four straight days, all the while dancing barefoot on the hot desert ground. He prayed, as Ku puts it, “for his people, for their health and well-being.”
That summer, Ku told himself, “I’m never going to hang out with those kids again. I can be somebody.”
As a senior at high school Stevens broke the state record for 3,200 meters.
© JASON BEAN/USA TODAY NETWORK
It was a sober decision for a 10-year-old to make but also characteristic of Ku. “He’s always been focused,” says his mother, Misty Stevens. “Even when he was in elementary school, he was serious about homework. I think it’s because he saw the neighbor down the street passed out with a bunch of empty bottles around him.”
Ku refused to go down that road, for he had an athletic gift and also a staggering dedication to running. For two years in high school, Ku didn’t have a coach. Or any teammates. The sole runner for Yerington, he ran alone on long, straight desert roads. Then in 2022, Ku broke the Nevada state record for the 3,200-meter run, clocking in at 8:54.83.
As he grew stronger, he also grew his hair long again. He began, as well, to think about racial justice, in part because when he was in eighth grade, two Black stepsisters at Yerington High, his friends Taylissa Marriott and Jayla Tolliver, were racially harassed at school—and then so ignored by administrators when they complained that they won a $160,000 settlement against the Lyon County School District. “There are blind racists out there,” Ku thought, “people who don’t even realize that this country was built on the blood and bones of my ancestors, and on misogyny and racism and slavery.”
In May 2021, Ku learned that 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children had just been discovered on the campus of an Indian boarding school in Canada. He knew then that it was time for him to speak out. With both his voice and his legs. Helped by his parents, he began organizing a singular athletic event to remember— and also expose—a dark passage in American history.
Stevens and U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto pay their respects.
© JASON BEAN/USA TODAY NETWORK
It’s a chilly morning in August 2022. The sky is still dark, and 30 or so runners and walkers, many of them Native American, are gathered in Yerington, on a grassy lawn near Ku’s home, to spend the next two days hoofing some 50 miles west through the Carson Desert.
As part of the second annual Remembrance Run, hosted by Ku and his parents, Delmar and Misty, the group gathered here will journey to the now-shuttered Stewart Indian School, where, from 1890 to the 1960s, Native American kids as young as 4 boarded year-round, forcibly removed from their parents, abused, beaten, belittled and forbidden to speak their native languages. Stewart was, like so many of the 400-plus Indian boarding schools that once scattered the U.S., a K-12 facility with a graveyard on campus.
We’re just letting you know why Native Americans suffer such immense historical trauma.
The runners are traveling in reverse the very route that one Stewart student—Ku’s great-grandfather, Frank Quinn—is believed to have taken to escape the school in the early 1900s, when he was about 8 years old. They’re making this journey at a critical moment: Last May, the U.S. Department of the Interior released a report estimating that “thousands or tens of thousands” of Native children died at these boarding schools. Congresswoman Sharice Davids, a Kansas Democrat, is now pushing a bill that would establish a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian boarding schools. And last summer, Pope Francis toured Canada, apologizing for the Catholic Church’s administration of many such schools and admitting the church was complicit in “genocide.”
“We’re not trying to make you feel bad about what your ancestors might have done,” Ku says, explaining the run’s purpose. “We’re just letting you know why Native Americans suffer such immense historical trauma.” His words are considered, his manner solemn. He exudes confidence and responsibility, and sometimes it’s hard to remember that he’s still a teenager. During one interview at his house, Ku decided, on his own initiative, to spend the afternoon weeding his family’s gravel driveway. He wielded a rake in the bone-dry 95-degree heat as he explained how Donald Trump is simply an heir to the racism underlying the 19th-century ravaging of Indigenous America.
“He’s always been focused,” says his mother.
© JASON BEAN/USA TODAY NETWORK
At sunrise, we gather in a circle and Paiute/Shoshone shaman Russell Abel, once a meth addict, now a fit, chiseled runner, prays for “every step we take.” He prays, as well, for Ku, “who brought us together.” Soon, another spiritual leader wanders among us, ritually smudging each participant, burning sage in a seashell, then guiding the smoke toward our torsos and legs by waving an eagle feather up and down. As Ku is smudged, he shakes out his legs, colt-like, loose; warming up, staying silent. He is intent, it seems, on imbibing all of the hope and the history contained in the smoke.
Then a moment later he is running, a gracefully lean young man with long black hair that sways with each footfall. Along with three other gazelle-thin harriers—32-year-old Lupe Cabada, who’s coached Ku part-time since 2020, and two top-tier Nevada high schoolers—he’s running at what for him is a snail’s pace, seven minutes a mile. At this pace, he can chat about girls, about his love for playing Super Smash Bros. on his Nintendo Switch, or about his 2001 BMW 330 Ci, which he wrecked by hitting a pole a few months ago. He can crack inside jokes with his running cronies, but that’s not really his style. There’s a cool, composed air to Ku, and now, as he stares off into the vast blue Nevada sky, he looks like a very different person from that kid who played games of doorbell ditch in 2015.
These days, Ku is a movie star, too. For a year now, a film crew has been documenting his life—his races, his graduation, the minor tiffs with his parents—as they make a full-length nonfiction film zeroing in on the Remembrance Run. Director/producer Paige Bethmann, a 28-year-old Indigenous Haudenosaunee from upstate New York, moved to Reno for the project because she was taken with the story of “a young person running 50 miles across the desert to honor his ancestors. He’s so articulate. He’s so positive.”
Ku is also a political operative. As he lopes west, Nevada’s governor, Steve Sisolak, is planning to meet him at the Stewart School to address the boarding school issue. Catherine Cortez Masto, a U.S. Senator representing Nevada, will be there too, as will Billy Mills, a Lakota runner who won the 10,000-meter race at the 1964 Olympics before becoming the eloquent leader of Running Strong for American Indian Youth, which funded this year’s Remembrance Run with a $10,000 Dreamstarter Award.
Will Ku become the next Billy Mills? It could happen. A month after this run, he’ll start his freshman year at the University of Oregon, becoming one of the first Native American harriers to join the nation’s most storied track program. U of O is where Nike founder Phil Knight made the world’s first waffle-soled shoes, and where ’70s-era phenom Steve Prefontaine became distance running’s icon of grit, gutting barrel-chested through 1,500- and 5,000-meter races as he minted brawny aphorisms such as “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”
As Ku turns left onto a gravel road, I think to myself: Who here isn’t rooting for this kid to shine? Hailing from a reservation afflicted by drug addiction and rampant suicide, he is a symbol of hope. It’s Ku’s picture that’s emblazoned across all the T-shirts for this second annual Remembrance Run, and it’s Ku who is posing with a ceremonial wooden staff in all the newspaper stories about the run. It’s unlikely this journey would even have happened were it not for his star power, and as the sun climbs in the sky and the desert becomes a scorching, treeless oven, to a person, every single runner cites Ku as their inspiration.
“A lot of people think all Native Americans are dead,” Amber Torres, the chair of the Walker River Paiute Tribe, tells me as she jogs along, “or that we’re just angry or that we’re drunks. In using his very powerful voice to focus on the boarding school issue, Ku’s showing people why we’re angry and why we’re bitter. He’s also showing people that we’re still here—and that we can overcome hardship.”
Runner Billy Mills (center, white shirt) joins Stevens (holding flag).
© JASON BEAN/USA TODAY NETWORK
I’m riding alongside the runners on a gravel bicycle with drop handlebars and semiwide knobby tires. I ride thousands of miles a year, but when we turn, just a couple miles in, onto a steep footpath, I can’t keep pace with Ku and his fleet entourage. The loose stones underfoot afford scant traction, and the land around me is a parched gray-brown expanse that gets but five inches of rain a year. I have to wonder: What did Frank Quinn do for water when he ran away from Stewart? Where did he find warmth when the sun set and the night cooled?
Unfortunately, Quinn never shared such details. The memory of the escape was too searing, but other reports make clear that Stewart runaways were risking their lives. In 1905, when four girls bolted from the school in winter, they were later found 200 miles away, in southern Nevada, “unconscious from cold and exhaustion,” according to a newspaper account. “They were lying in the open under the trees with the thermometer 3 degrees below zero.” In 1915, seven boys bolted, got caught after two days and were summarily whipped before spending three days in the dark, windowless school jail. Such treatment was normal; Stewart employed a full-time disciplinarian to ensure that this was so.
Nearly all the runners and walkers trailing Ku carry a memory of the disciplinarian in their bones. Still, the mood is often festive. When we arrive at the first rest station—they’re set up every five miles—there are tunes blaring, and a shade tent with an Astroturf rug and comfortable lawn chairs beneath it. We sit there, savoring an ample supply of pickle juice and coconut water, and as the runners come in, each one gets a razzle-dazzle cheer.
At most endurance events, the vibe isn’t quite this homey. A Lycra-inflected vanity often prevails, and never-quite- enunciated social codes dictate that elite athletes harbor more cachet—more voice—than the quitters and stragglers. But in Indian Country, being community- minded is paramount, and the Stevens family has taken pains to ensure that everyone present feels included and cared for, even if they’re rest-station volunteers who never run a step. At least five times, Ku’s dad, Delmar, asks me if I’m getting enough to eat.
It’s not going to be what Ku achieves in sport that matters. It will be the legacy that he leaves for creating justice.
Underlying all this hospitality is Frank Quinn, an ancestor Ku so admires that he scribed Frank’s name into the side panel of his track spikes. As an adult, Frank was an alfalfa farmer and a worker at the Anaconda mine. But he’s remembered most for his generosity. “Frank always took care of people when they came to his house,” says Ku, who learned of his great- grandpa through family stories. “They went away with a full belly. He made sure they had firewood.”
There’s room here on this run for boarding school survivors to feel comfortable, to tell stories, and when I meet up with Stacey James, who is Washoe and Eastern Cherokee and limping along in a knee brace, she tells me of her uncle who attempted to escape Stewart three times and then joined the Navy before turning 18 to serve in the Korean War. “His children—my cousins—have always talked about how horrible their childhood was,” James tells me. “He drank a lot. He was not a good father. He hit his wife. But now the stories from Stewart are coming to light—of beatings, of children being molested— and forgiveness is starting to happen. I’m very thankful that Ku is bringing this issue to light. I hope that more people start healing.”
Ku, with his mother and father, is now attending the University of Oregon.
© Provided by Ku Stevens
This run is a war of attrition. With every hill, there are more people walking or riding along in support vehicles. Fun is still in the air, though. The fourth rest stop, at 20 miles, has a rock ’n’ roll theme and free temporary tattoos. Eager film-crew members stand in line for elaborate sponge-on tramp stamps.
Ku is a bit removed from the hoopla, though. He just sits in his lawn chair quietly, his skin glistening with sweat, his torso bare. It’s 95 degrees out now, and he just knocked off the 20th mile in 5:30, a burst that left his running mates sucking dust. At this point, there are only two people who’ve run all 20 miles with a plan to continue—Ku and coach Lupe Cabada, a 2:28 marathoner. They’re conserving their energy. Wisely, for the day’s final five-mile segment is ugly. It’s an 800-foot climb up a dirt road, and it’s so rubbly that midway up I’m walking my bike. My heart is hammering, and I find myself asking whether I’ll even make it to the top. And what about the people behind me?
Every ultra-long-distance run is like a prayer—a prayer that each runner involved can transcend their human frailty; a prayer that, by lacing up their shoes and flinging themselves at rocks and roots and mountains and streams, they can cover 26, 31, 50 miles—whatever—carried along by little more than sinew and stick-to-activeness. There is so much uncertainty involved, and so much hope.
But sometimes the prayer involved is deeper, more rooted in history and suffering. As we move through the desert, growing dehydrated, getting sunburnt, seizing with the odd muscle cramp, we’re glimpsing the pain Frank Quinn must have felt escaping Stewart. And when we stop, 25 miles in, to camp amid a rare stand of pine trees, a solidarity bonds our mission. The sun sets. It grows cold, and then we gather once more in a circle, lit only by a couple of lanterns, and watch as Ku steps into the middle, encouraging each of the 45 people present to speak one by one and to share stories about the boarding schools if they’d like. “This is a safe space,” he tells us. “If you don’t want the documentary crew to film you, just let them know.”
Our leader is 18 years old and his manner is so calm, so poised that he only deepens the tranquility we all feel sitting here. We’ve been drawn to the desert by Ku’s cool sense of purpose, and now this gathering feels more like a solemn college send-off party. “Ku,” says one elder, “you’re a very powerful young man. College is your journey, but do come back. Come home.”
Heavy? Awkward? For most teenagers it certainly would be, but Ku finds a way to elevate the moment. “A lot of people say I’m inspirational,” he tells the circle, “but I want you all to think of yourselves as inspirational. Go out there and be the best person you can be.”
We get up out of our chairs eventually and wander back to our tents to sleep under the stars.
Despite the heat, almost no one gives up during the run.
© JASON BEAN/USA TODAY NETWORK
The next morning I talk to Paige Bethmann, the film director, and she argues that Ku is part of a new generation of Natives who’ve “realized that they can be the caretakers of our elders’ stories.” Bethmann is also a fan of Reservation Dogs, a Native-written teen comedy, now heading into its third season on Hulu, that sympathetically follows a group of teenage pals as they commit, and also fight, crime. And as we speak, she’s wearing a ball cap that reads “You are on Native land.” It was made by Urban Native Era, an Indigenous-owned apparel company that last year partnered with REI. “Our generation is more removed from the trauma,” says Bethmann, “and I think that makes us more free to speak out.”
Our route today begins with a ladder-steep climb out of the campground before it segues to the cruel slopes of Sunrise Pass, elevation 7,096. At the first rest stop, I find Lupe Cabada pressing a vibrating massage gun into a spasm in his abdomen. Ku looks on impassively. “I’m not sore,” he tells me. “I think I’ll run 12 tomorrow.” A few hours later, around mile 38 of our two-day odyssey, he belts out a 4:38 downhill mile.
There’s a beautiful spirit at work on this journey: Almost no one is giving up. People sit out segments, sure, but then I see them out on the road again, briskly power walking or running with a shuffling, bent-back stride that’s half-walk. If folks can’t do a full leg, they cover a mile or two. The collective momentum is poignant and purposeful.
Eventually we all duck into a hole cut in a barbed-wire fence and find ourselves wading through a bend in the shallow, shin-high Carson River. I’m with Russell Abel, the shaman, now. As we carry our shoes, wading along through the sublimely cool water, no one is speaking. I hear only soft splashing, and the moment seems holy: So much intention, and now we’ve almost arrived.
When we reach the edge of the Stewart campus, Billy Mills, the gold medalist, is there waiting for us, a hale 84-year-old man sporting track warm-up pants. As he greets Ku, his smile is beneficent, his hopes vast. “It’s not going to be what Ku achieves in sport that matters,” he tells me in soft, meditative tones. “It will be the legacy that he leaves for creating justice. The footprints these runners traced today will create the America of tomorrow. They will heal the sacredness of the American democratic spirit.”
A moment later, Remembrance runners and walkers march, en masse, behind Mills to the Stewart cemetery. Then Ku stands at the gate, addressing a crowd of 200 as TV cameramen clamber about them. “I’m just an 18-year-old,” he says. “So how would something that happened 100 years ago affect me? But it does. I want all of you here to know that. It affects all of us Natives. But we’re strong. All of you who made this journey, you’re strong. Now let’s go give our offerings to these kids.”
Ku bows his head, and with Senator Cortez Masto at his side, he makes his way into the graveyard. He bends low to the tombstones and prays.
Two weeks later he’s in Eugene, Oregon. He wears U of O Duck colors, green and gold, as he trains at Hayward Field, the site of the last four U.S. Olympic trials for track and field. He joins the Native American Student Union, and when the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition holds a Zoom conference for 500 people, he delivers a speech while sitting cross-legged on the floor of his dorm room.
These days, Ku harbors a dream that involves Nike and its N7 Fund, which awards grants to Native American and Indigenous organizations to help youth lead “healthier, happier and successful lives,” according to the company. Ku hopes one day to design shoes for the N7 Fund—running shoes that would bear Indigenous iconography. “A lot of kids can’t accept being Native,” he explains one afternoon, remembering his own experience. “These shoes would be empowering. If I had them when I was younger, I would have felt so much better about myself.”
As he speaks, I’m reminded of Ku’s favorite shoes, the orange-and-white Nike track spikes he wore when he broke the state record for his 3,200-meter run. Back in Yerington, those shoes hung from the TV in his bedroom. Now he’s brought them with him to college, and they’re still decorated with the three words he scribed onto them one night, in pen, to sum up what propels him. Written into the swoosh, his small block letters read: FOR MY PEOPLE.
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