Indians Plan ‘Sacred Run’ in Hemisphere

Dennis Banks co-founded the American Indian Movement in 1968 to fight for Indian rights in the United States. Ten years later, he started a Sacred Run to spread a message of harmony around the world.

“The relationship between human beings and the planet--that relationship is called harmony. It’s very sacred harmony,” Banks said from the Sacred Run’s planning offices in Newport, Ky.

“We’ve started to get away from that harmony,” he said. “As a result, there was a lot of destruction. Streams were being polluted. The air was being polluted. Trees were being hurt.”

Banks was inspired to start the Sacred Run by Indian elders meeting in 1977. They called for a return to traditional Indian ceremonies to renew that harmony.

“All throughout history, in every society, we’ve used running as a means of getting messages from village to village,” he said. “I felt that we should revive the old traditional way.”

In 1978, Banks directed his first annual spiritual run, about 500 miles from Davis, Calif., to Los Angeles. Since then, the annual event has included runs across the United States, Japan, Europe and Canada.

His plans for 1992 are by far the most ambitious: He wants two main teams of runners to cover the length of the Western Hemisphere.

In April, a team starting on the Siberian side of the Bering Strait will cross the water by canoe and begin running south through Alaska, Canada, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona to Santa Fe, N.M. That leg will total about 9,500 miles.

In June, a second team will run 5,000 miles north to Santa Fe from Tierra del Fuego at the southernmost tip of South America.

Ten to 12 runners on each team will cover a total of 100 to 150 miles a day. Each runner will carry a leather-wrapped sacred staff about the size of the baton used in relay races. Four feathers on top of the staff symbolize the four directions.

At night, the runners will camp. In many places, they will hold native dances and sing traditional songs in a cultural exchange with the locals.

A team of Penobscot Indians also will run west across the United States from Maine to Santa Fe, while a fourth team will run from San Francisco to Santa Fe.

All four groups are scheduled to arrive in Santa Fe on Oct. 8.

The Sacred Run will be followed by several days of celebration of the survival of native people around the world, said Alice Lambert, the Sacred Run’s director of planning.

The 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the New World will fall around the same time, but the runners will not acknowledge Columbus Day.

“We are not a political group. We carry a spiritual message,” Lambert said.

The festivities will include a powwow, arts exhibition and showings of Indian films. Banks said rock musicians Carlos Santana and the Grateful Dead, and Red Thunder, an American Indian singer from New Mexico, also are scheduled to perform.

The Sacred Run is sponsored by Indians and is steeped in their traditions, but non-native people, including Europeans, Canadians and Japanese, also will be running.

The runners--all volunteers--range in age from 11 to 60, Lambert said.

Nobody wins or loses; participants just run toward their goal. Banks, who will be coaching the team that starts in Siberia, plans to run 10 miles a day.

“We never push for time on each run,” he said. “If somebody does a five-minute mile, that’s great. If they do a 10-minute mile, like I do, that’s great too.”

Banks and Lambert already are coordinating Sacred Runs that will go to Australia and New Zealand in 1993 and to Africa in 1994.

Banks also still serves as national director of the American Indian Movement.

AIM often was labeled militant, particularly in its early years. In 1973, Banks was involved in a 71-day reservation takeover at Wounded Knee, S.D. The armed confrontation between about 300 AIM supporters and as many federal law officers left two Indians dead and two officers injured. Felony charges against Banks later were dismissed.

“To start the Sacred Run 14 years ago was not out of context of what we were about,” Banks said.

AIM was involved with confrontations but also engaged in peaceful activities, Banks said. Those included creating a federal housing program for Indians in Minneapolis-St. Paul and establishing skill training centers.