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SACRED RUN 2006 Alcatraz Island to Washington,
D.C.
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| Previous days' reflections | Today's reflections... Reflections on this page are by sacredrun.org websteward, Roger Straw, unless noted otherwise... |
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Day 15, Feb. 25
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Along the route from Vaughn to Clovis, many of us stopped for a somber visit at the Bosque Redondo Memorial at Fort Sumner. We felt the heavy spirits in that beautiful place, walked through the Visitors' Center reading about the history and viewing the artifacts and photos, and then we held a pipe ceremony in memory of the 3000 Navajo and Mescalero Apache people who died there after the "Navaho Longest Walk" of 1860s.
On the Sacred Road, more soon... Day 15 - Saturday, February 25, 2006
Sacred runners and walkers keep coming and leaving. In the last two days we've said good bye to Chari and Akiko, Rogelio, Raquel, and farewell again(!) to Julie and Charlie. And we welcomed back Wounded Knee and Joel, along with Joel's brother Tony, sister-in-law Holly, and little Echo. Larry (B.G.) also returned. And we received new runners/walkers, Max, Satori, Matoska, and a few others whose names I don't have yet. (We are working on a complete roster for you. We will post it as soon as we can, along with interviews of many Sacred Runners and Walkers.)
Another great story - in the early morning hours of Day 12, Wednesday, February 22, one of our Sacred Runners, Ryuji "Chari" Sakata ran 50 miles! He began at 1:08am and ran from Socorro, NM to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, arriving at 1:15pm. Go Chari! (Someone has promised me a pic of Chari running that night. I'll post it here sometime soon.) What a powerful witness for Land, Life and Peace! Day 12 - Wednesday, February 22, 2006
When we started February 11th, from Alcatraz, on our way to Washington, D.C., we had hoped our journey would take us on a path that would bring new friends, new ideas and new challenges. So far our expectations have been surpassed by such overwhelming numbers it staggers the mind. Not only have we met new friends, but all our old friends are coming out to greet us along the roads, community centers, cafes, gas stations, and in tribal offices.
- Dennis J. Banks P.S. ..and for future running events, stay packed.
A couple of days ago I was asked to write something about why I walk / run and why I have joined this Sacred Run from San Francisco to D.C. There are many many reasons WHY and it is hard to explain many of them without writing something about my life for the last 12 years. In 1993 Dennis Banks came to Australia with Sacred Run, I had heard about this event through my involvement with some Aboriginal people from around the Melbourne area in Victoria. I decided to take a couple of weeks off work and join them, within a week I found myself feeling (for the first time) that I was doing something that I completely believed in. We finished the run in late November after 2 months, and by February I was in San Francisco to join the Walk for Justice!!! (San Francisco – D.C.) During the Walk for Justice I met Jun San (a Japanese Buddhist Nun with Nipponzan Myohoji) her order was organizing a 9 month Peace Walk from Auschwitz to Hiroshima for the 50th Anniversary of World War 2, this was to start 5 months after the Walk for Justice was finishing. With a few smaller Sacred Runs in between I left for Auschwitz in early December 1994. Staying inside this Concentration Camp for 7 days where millions were killed is a haunting memory that still lives with me. We were there with people who had been prisoners, and also the realities of people who did not survive, along with SS guards and many others. From there we walked through Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia during the war, as the Peace Walk continued to Iraq, I left to join Sacred Run again for a 2 month run through Japan, which would have this walk and run met in Hiroshima on August 6th 1995 for the 50th Anniversary of Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
Ever since 1993, I have continued to join Sacred Run and to Walk with Nipponzan Myohoji in many parts of the world. During these last 12 years I have been fortunate to meet some of the most amazing and inspiring people. People who have spent decades working for Peace and Social Change, people who have lost their partners, their children, their friends, and yet they still continue to do all they can to keep the struggle for World Peace alive.
Sacred Run is what first opened my eyes to a much larger world, and led me to many other organizations doing similar things. I am honored to be back on Sacred Run again, with lots of old friends who took the time to teach me so much when I was first getting involved in the struggle, and also opened my life up to spirituality and a belief that WE can make change. We must go further than just talking about the changes that need to happen, we need to take action, to connect with more and more people, and to create ways for more people to become actively involved in creating Peace and making social change. Only a true sense of spirituality can make it possible for us to stop destroying the environment, and stop us from taking advantage of other people lives and be more concerned with the welfare of EVERYONE instead of just thinking of ourselves. I will continue to do this for as long as I can walk or run, to honor all those who have given everything, including there lives and their freedom. To become spiritually stronger myself and to help keep the movement for peace and social change alive. Peace & Solidarity Day 10 - Monday, February 20, 2006 I’ve been on the road, ahead of the Sacred Runners and Walkers, holed up in Albuquerque, tending to my other web sites. Unfortunately, my other work makes me a part-time Sacred Walker.
I had a fascinating conversation about this with Marcus somewhere between Parker and Phoenix, in Arizona. He, along with maybe a half dozen others on this Sacred Run, have been going on these ceremonial journeys for years. In order to do so, they’ve given up all kinds of things, not least of which is a regular income. Family relationships have suffered. And they have endured extreme weather, hunger, sleeplessness, pain and discomfort. And they’ve come out stronger, and their witness has had a profound effect on people all around the world. What makes people do this!? The decision to participate, knowing the costs, cannot be easy for anyone steeped in the comforts of an affluent life or even a lower to middle class lifestyle. I asked one of our Australian runners, Marcus, why do you walk and run, again and again, sacrificing yourself? I’ve asked him to write his own statement for these pages, which I hope he completes soon, so I won’t presume to speak for him, or to sum up his answer. But my eyes were opened a bit as we talked.
Soooo, anyway..... Next time I’m sleeping on a hard gymnasium floor, or feeling the wind burn my face, or freezing, or staying up late to plan tomorrow's route for the Sacred Walkers, I will remind myself that pain and endurance is sometimes redemptive. The gifts of self-neglect we give the world bear fruit. We pay the price, and the fruit is often invisible, a thing of Spirit, a light breeze against the powers that be, but a breeze that sometimes mysteriously joins with the breezes of others in the struggle, and becomes a mighty wind that blows to the Four Directions, and makes the Circle one again. That’s my prayer with every step on today’s journey.
Day 7 - Friday, February 17, 2006 (I've asked a number of our runners and walkers to write to you now and then. Today, I'll introduce Jessica Sutterlict, Winnebago, Santee Sioux. Jessica is 24 years old, so I asked her to write something for the youth...)
- Jessica Sutterlict, Winnebago, Santee Sioux, age 24 Day 6 - Thursday, February 16, 2006
So here I am in Phoenix. We have the morning off for laundry and rest. Later today we will head east of Phoenix, to the Pima Reservation, where a huge dance and party is planned. I’m told the dancers will go all night! (I won’t write about my old bones again. I know you’re tired of hearing about them. Suffice to say, “I could have danced all night” is not one of my songs....)
Stay tuned - more later.. Day 4 - Tuesday, February 14, 2006
More later... Day 3 - Monday, February 13, 2006
Well, don't send out a search party. You have to know Nathan - he was just kidding. But there WAS a good bit of turning around and getting off-track between Merced and Keene! It was a long road trip after the run from Merced.
Day 2 - Sunday, February 12, 2006 Good morning, World! Or as Dennis Banks often says, “All we are asking, all we are really hoping for, is for this to be a Good Day.” I begin my report on this epic journey Sacred Run 2006, with a simple Good Morning wish. To you, to your family, your people. And for all the world, and for Land, Life and Peace. Our heart is in the center of our movements for justice and peace, for clean water and air, for sharing and respect among the peoples, for freedom for all. Our heartbeat is the kindness, the genuine good wishes, the hunger for understanding and being understood that create a clean and good intent. May this be a Good Day for us runners and walkers and for you! Let me introduce myself... I’m Roger Straw, websteward for sacredrun.org, a 57 year-old whitish member of the genocided unknowns, what I call the Ghost People. There are so many of us whose American Indian family ancestry is now only the story of an aged aunt or uncle. We remember but cannot document our native ancestors. In my case, a great-great (and maybe another great) grandfather was an Indiana man whose family covered up his heritage, who was perhaps not proud, or at least, who feared for his safety and the safety of his mixed-blood family. There was genocide, and then there was this quiet disappearance. So, I am Roger Foot, as my friend Wounded Knee Norman Deocampo calls me. I might prefer to be White Pelican. I think it may be a part of my spiritual journey on this Sacred Run to discover just who I am as a white descendant of a Native American man. I hope Dennis gives me an Indian name. And I’m waiting to be invited to my first sweat. You will be hearing from others on these pages, including Dennis Banks and other long-time runners and activists in the American Indian Movement. Be glad you won’t have to listen only to this old white guy! We plan to “sit around the campfires” along the way, tell our stories, hear the tales that people on our route have to tell us, and report back to you. I will interview people, and I’ll give space to others to write. I will refer you, blog-style, to other interesting and important websites. (If you have a site you want linked or mentioned, please write me at rogrmail@sacredrun.org.) And when I figure out the technology, (soon, I hope), I’m planning to add an interactive element to these pages, so you can write back to us online.)
At the end of the ceremonies, Dennis lined up all the runners and walkers, and Clyde blessed us with more sage, and we were presented with medicine pouches. Then the ferry took us back to San Francisco, and we motored to DQ University in Davis, CA. Another ceremony there sent us on our way, and the run began. More tomorrow (IF I can access the internet for upload)...
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Day 17 - Monday, February 27, 2006
In Clovis, we stayed at the New Mexico National Guard Armory! This was a bit strange for some of us anti-war peacemakers. Our host, Staff Sergeant Terry Stevens, however, was really eager to be at our service, and opens the armory often to many different community groups. We are so thankful for the Armory's hospitality. Budhist monk Jun Yasuda left our military sisters and brothers something to think about on the chalk board: "No time to war. We have to take care beautiful planet. All nations together."
We all know that the political situation throughout the world is getting worse and worse by the day, and that this is leading to environmental destruction and wars around the world, spirituality has become just a business for the majority of the worlds religions, drugs and alcohol are destroying the lives of youth and families everywhere, and in the future world peace will become less and less unlikely unless we can all come together NOW and work for change.
We all need to respect, affirm, and take care of ourselves. But self-care is challenged by the historic struggles that affect us personally, and by the horrors of a violent and unjust world. If we all gave in to the pursuit of personal pleasures and self-embracing happiness, who would speak and work for justice? Who would call for peace? Who would challenge the root causes of poverty and rise up in solidarity for freedom and economic parity?
To all the beautiful Native Youth... Throughout history our Native people had to fight to preserve language, culture, civil rights and we had to fight to be acknowledged as humans rather than things or animals. Each generation has accomplished a movement toward the survival of our Nation. It is up to us, the Native Youth of all ages, to contribute to this change; otherwise the hard work and suffering our people have gone through will mean nothing. We must never give in or give up. 
Talking to long-time Sacred Runners and those who are new to the discipline, everyone agrees there are not enough hours in the day. This surprises me a little. Getting away from home, away from the demands of my family and community and away from all the usual habits of everyday life, I thought there would be a simplicity that would offer the feeling of abundance, open space in time, easy rhythms of morning, walking and night. But there is so much to do! I have less time than I expected to write, to update the website, to just chat with all my new friends. Once long ago, on vacation with my sweetheart in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I remarked lightheartedly that all vacation really amounts to is “doing chores in exotic places.” It’s been our little joke ever since, and I think it applies to Sacred Run. You still have the demands of every day and the work of the Run, so that your ambition, your eagerness, your high hopes all have to be balanced by the organic limits of finitude. Finding balance, being in right relation with Mother Earth, with the People, and with one’s own heart and mind and body and spirit - this is the everyday ground from which springs forth The Work: beyond everything, we are on pilgrimage together to bring a message of Land, Life and Peace. Wake up, people! Preserve the Earth! Live free and whole! Respect other people, respect the Earth! Oppose the desecration of sacred sites! Oppose war! Make Peace!
Nathan Chasing Horses says: FLASH! Dennis banks lost in Tehachapi Mountains!
You should take a look at this morning’s Vallejo Times-Herald (Vallejo, CA). Columnist Richard Freedman interviewed Dennis Banks on the day before the start of Sacred Run 2006. (
The Benefit Concert in San Francisco was great hit. (Friday, February 10, 2006) The artists were outstanding, and it was an incredible high for us to be on the same floor, up close and personal with good-hearted activist/actor Peter Coyote, Jefferson Airplane keyboards/bass guitarist Pete Sears, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Robby Romero, Martha Redbone, Wavy Gravy and his Fish, ..and all the others. I haven’t heard how much money we raised for the run, but I’ll let you know when I hear. I do know that first reports were that we raised far too little, and contributions are still desperately needed. Don’t forget, gas will cost us $2.50/gallon this year! Yipes - please go to our donations page, http://www.redhotpromotions.com/id99.htm.
Alcatraz was amazing. (Saturday, Febraury 11, 2006) We gathered in the dark before sunrise in a great unclosed circle, with a door to the east, preparing for sun with drums and chanting. Seagulls joined in the celebration, circling in the pre-dawn light, crying out what I felt to be a happy sound: air-dancing to the sounds of native people as in days of long ago. But of course I project my own feelings onto these creatures of grace. Only the Great Spirit in them leads them in any and every moment, to do as they do. We humans are too often other-led. But not that morning, February 11, 2006, gathered on Alcatraz. On that morning, as for all time, Alcatraz was much more than an island. As Dennis said, “Alcatraz serves as a reminder to us to stand tall, to stand up, to spark new ideas and pride and energy for Indian people.”
