Environmental awareness focus of Sacred Run

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Some 35 runners will participate in the 1996 Sacred Run, being billed as "The Longest Run III". Led by Native Americans, this multicultural, international cross-country run will include runners from Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Japan, as well as the host United States. The 4,200 km run will take 105 days and is scheduled to finish at the site of the 1996 summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Ga.

"We are watching our environment being destroyed," run founder and organizer Dennis J. Banks said. "If we are to survive as a species, we must begin to make dramatic changes right now. This is a message that our runners will make known in every town and village, and to every person they meet."

On the run, which will begin on March 28 in Santa Monica, Calif., the athletes will cover 48 km per day and will rest every fifth day. The run will end on July 11 in Atlanta, and participants and supporters will be welcomed at a powwow July 12 to 14. It will be a fitting end to a journey both spiritual and athletic, according to Banks, who is an Ojibwe born in Leech Lake, Minn.

"It is a time for people to come together in song and dance, to put aside tribal differences and help bridge the gap between the Native American and the non-Native worlds," he said.

Runners will collect gifts, proclamations and letters along the route, and gather them into bundles. The bundles will be buried in a time capsule at the end of the run, as an environmental reminder to future generations. As well, in 10 cities along the way, and the starting and ending points, runners will plant cottonwood trees, the sacred tree of the Sundance People and a symbol of honor and spiritual growth.

The long-distance run is a Native tradition, and was used to spread messages, news and information. Banks revived the tradition of the sacred run with the Sacred Run Foundation in 1978. It has sponsored international runs covering a total of 90,000 km.

Banks was a co-founder of the American Indian Movement in 1968, and was at the centre of the 1971 Wounded Knee confrontation on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. He served as the principal negotiator and leader of the protesters. Since then, he has continued as an activist, writer, actor, teacher and organizer of the Sacred Run.