Today, I share with you an uplifting new video detailing our participation at this year’s Run Crazy Horse marathon. I have been attending this event for 12 years; in fact, it was my first marathon ever! I have deep respect for those who put themselves through the training, the discipline, and the process of a marathon, half marathon, or any form of distance running. And I’m happy to say that, throughout the years, we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of Indigenous runners participating in this annual tradition. Because promoting healthy living is extra important in tribal communities, we’re extremely proud to support Run Crazy Horse.

Watch: I’m proud of our team’s performance — but the best part is sharing this healthy and challenging pursuit with everyone participating, including those who helped us set up and run our hydration station. After all, water is life!

At this year’s run, Sacred Defense Fund and Lakota Law were honored to host a hydration station. My mother and leaders of the Native American Youth Organization personally served over 1,000 runners with much needed water! I give a big thank you to Wally Little Moon for the Mni Wiconi/Water is Life sign, which all the runners saw as they passed by our teepee on the Mickelson Trail in the Black Hills. 

Because of what I’ll term controversial dynamics, Native People have undergone a process of attrition with respect to food and medicine — or lack of food and the need for good medicine — from western society. This scarcity of healthy food and adequate medicine for our people goes back centuries, to the time when we were originally confined to prison camps during the Indian Wars. These days, the Native body still often has trouble adapting to the sugars, the flours, and the processed poisons pushed on the American public.  

One way to stand up against that attrition is to move your body. Every runner has a story of how they came to give of themselves and their bodies in the search for healing, their own meaning, their own purpose, and their own medicine. What we all have in common is that, when we run, we are engaging in a healthy movement that provides the ability to find ourselves.

Sacred Defense Fund wants to promote physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness for each and every runner in the Crazy Horse marathon. More broadly, we want all people who engage in communion with the outdoors to experience a heightened consciousness during mind-body practice. We want those who seek recreation or any meaningful engagement with the natural world to understand that we need help in defending it — the sacred sites, lands, waters, and ecosystems constantly under threat from corporate extraction.

So I want to say a genuine thank you to everybody who organizes events such as these. Sacred Defense Fund looks forward to facilitating more participation, more interaction, and more empowerment of the mind, body, and soul with our friends and relatives.

Wopila tanka — my gratitude to you for supporting tribal health and safety!
Chase Iron Eyes
Director and Lead Counsel
Lakota People’s Law Project
Sacred Defense Fund