Runners Go Long Way to Make a Point

With a medicine pouch around his neck, a bottle of water over his shoulder and a staff adorned with eagle feathers in his hand, Greg Sutterlict was ready for his journey across America.

Sutterlict was among 22 runners, most Native Americans, who prepared Thursday to leave from Huntington Beach near the mouth of the Santa Ana River for a 2,600-mile trip across the country in the 105-day “Sacred Run.”

“The run is a traditional way of running from village to village to let people know that life is sacred, that we’re all related and to spread the connection we have with Mother Earth,” said Sutterlict of the Yakima-Chehalis tribes from Washington.

Dennis J. Banks, founder of the Sacred Run Foundation Inc., a multicultural organization dedicated to preserving the environment, said runners are delivering the message that people must live in harmony with the environment. The foundation and the Aveda Corp. of Minnesota are sponsoring the run.

To prepare for the run that begins today, the participants gathered on the beach Thursday for a sacred ceremony. A pipe was filled with tobacco, to be smoked when runners arrive in Atlanta on July 11, the eve of the summer Olympic Games. Sage was burned to purify the runners’ minds for their journey, Banks said.

Sutterlict said the four eagle feathers on his willow staff represent north, south, east and west and will help lead him.

“You can feel the strength when you carry it and it will guide you,” he said.

Banks, 60, an activist and a founder of the American Indian Movement more than 20 years ago, began the Sacred Run organization in 1978 to heighten awareness about destruction of the environment.

He has organized runs all over the world, including Europe, Japan and Australia.

“If [something is] not done, then the environment will be in terrible trouble and human beings will suffer,” he said.

The runners, some from Poland, Australia and Japan, will run about 30 miles a day and rest every fifth day.

On Thursday night, they stayed in Featherly Park, near Orange County’s eastern border. They expect to leave California on Easter Sunday.

Runner Zdzislaw Bala of Poland, who participated in the Sacred Run held in Europe in 1990, said that the event is important for people all over the world.

“Our Mother Earth is destroyed enough now,” Bala said. “We have to save nature for the next generation.”