Hopi XC team wins 23rd consecutive state championship (12 News)

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Here’s a story that 12 News in Arizona ran earlier this month on the Hopi High School boys cross country team. They recently won their 23rd consecutive State championship, and the Hopi High girls cross country team won their sixth State title.

In the early 1900s, newspaper reporters and their illustrators often gave bizarre reasons why Hopis did so well in running events.

Some said that Hopis excelled in running because they had once been chased by Spanish vaqueros (cowboys), and rather than fighting the Spaniards, the Hopis chose to run away.

Hopis had supposedly done this so many times that they became great runners.

Well, needless to say, I was quite pleased to see that the reporter for 12 News focused her reporting on Hopi culture, and the long tradition of running among our people.

A Runners Forum For Our Future, January 2-4, 2013 (Moenkopi)

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This is going to be an incredible event.

Oglala Lakota Olympian Billy Mills will be the keynote speaker, alongside Tarahumarah runners from Copper Canyon in Mexico. Navajo runner Alvina Begay will also present.

I was asked to present at the forum, but I’m unable to make the trip back home during the first week in January.

Please help spread the word about this gathering of Hopi and other indigenous runners!

FIRST PEOPLES features The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue

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This month Oregon State University Press officially launched my co-edited (with Clifford E. Trafzer and Lorene Sisquoc) book The Indian School on Magnolia Avenue: Voices and Images from Sherman Institute. The book is part of the First Peoples, New Directions in Indigenous Studies, initiative. Yesterday, Natasha Varner at First Peoples published a post about the book on their blog. She quoted at length from my Conclusion. Here’s the first paragraph of my Conclusion which I titled “An Open Vault”:

On a warm October day in 2004, I drove my car south on Magnolia Avenue in Riverside and made my way to Sherman Indian High School for the Sherman Indian Museum Open House. The event was a festive occasion, as alumni from across the nation came together to remember their school days and visit with old friends. Outside the Museum, the school’s choir was singing their alma mater, “The Purple and Gold,” and a group of older Sherman alums were taking refuge from the heat by sitting in the shade of a large palm tree. Near the school’s flagpole, children were laughing and playing, while their parents listened contentedly to the choir. The smell of frybread permeated the air.

To read the entire Conclusion, and to learn more about the book, be sure to check out the First Peoples website. They have done a terrific job in promoting the book on-line and at various academic conferences.

All royalties from this book will go to help fund educational and cultural programming at the Sherman Indian Museum in Riverside, CA.