With the sun barely out and cold wind blowing up dust Sunday morning on Lady Bird Lake, a group of people gathered outside of Mañana coffee shop, stretching and setting up tables. The crew behind “Remaining Native” and representatives from the Nike Running brand prepped for 600 runners who RSVP’d for their 5K run led by the documentary’s protagonist around the lake to promote the film and its message.
“Remaining Native” premiered at South by Southwest on Friday, telling the story of Kutoven Stevens, a then-17-year-old from the Northern Nevada Paiute community who was determined to become a runner at the University of Oregon, where he now runs. The director Paige Bethmann connected with Stevens and started the documentary in 2021, following the discovery of the Kamloops indigenous boarding school children found in unmarked graves. She said she saw the visual opportunity in Stevens’ story when she read an article from the Reno Gazette-Journal, saying he’d be running and hosting a 50-mile remembrance run for his great grandfather who ran 50 miles through the desert to get away from a Native American boarding school he’d been sent to as a child.
“As soon as I got (to Nevada), the amount of support and people around him and the way he carries himself — it was so inspiring,” Bethmann said. “Also, he had aspirations of being a (Division I) runner, and from a community where there was no team, he had no coach. … The sheer determination that this kid had — I was like, ‘I’m interested to know how this will play out.’”
With the documentary finally premiering at SXSW this week, the team set up events relating to the advocacy for supporting Indigenous communities in Austin this week. In between its five screenings from Friday to Tuesday, they hosted the Sunday 5K with Nike Running. The event featured coffee, breakfast tacos, Nike merch and a performance from the Austin Powwow. They also hosted a post-screening Q&A on Tuesday with Billy Mills, a distance running Olympian and Oglala Lakota community member.
“We really wanted to make sure folks knew we were coming here. … (We wanted) them to see the film and be in support of the film and just be able to share it with them,” Bethmann said. “The film is first and foremost, made for Native people, and then non-Native people can relate to the message as well — the coming of age story, it’s a family story, and (it) involves a lot of running.”
Jessica Epstein, a producer for the documentary, said she’s learned about community impact through working on the film and seeing it brought to life with the support of so many different partners, including Running Strong for American Indian Youth and the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
“What we hope people walk away with is a very powerful story of generational healing, of the stories that have been passed down for many years and families that we don’t talk about or that we do, but there are ways for us to find community and find each other, and show up for one another and community,” Epstein said.
Stevens said his dad’s character growing up encouraged him to be an advocate for his community and promote community engagement. He said hunting is an important part of his community; his dad is a big hunter and would often share what he hunted with elders and neighbors who couldn’t hunt first, looking out for them.
“Seeing him do that from such a young age … (I recognized) that’s the way I should be as well, to always put my community first and (use) the way that I do things and the way that I carry myself as a form of representation and self-expression,” Stevens said.
