Hopi Trailblazers Expand Meanings of Running Farina King (bio) Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, Hopi Runners: Crossing the Terrain Between Indian and American. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2018. xvii + 276 pp. Illustrations, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. $27.95. Running speaks across different languages and cultures. To some, running is a prayer that transcends the physical. My Diné ancestors learned to greet the sun each morning with a prayer and run toward the rising sunbeams. They learned to run for both physical and spiritual strength. Running was a survival tactic for my father who tried to escape an Indian boarding school in the 1950s. As Hopi scholar Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert of the Village of Upper Munqapi explains in his book, Hopi Runners, U.S. officials incarcerated Native Americans by sending them to boarding schools such as the Carlisle Indian Industrial Institute, where they continued to run literally and figuratively. Carlisle was one of many boarding schools that trained some of the most celebrated Hopi runners, including Louis Tewanima, who earned the silver medal in the 10,000-meter run of the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. The indigenous peoples of the Southwest have since time immemorial respected Hopis as among the best runners in the world. Gilbert primarily focuses his study on Hopi runners, or warik'aya, during the transitional era of the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. He dispels the image of a running "brave" frozen in time by placing Hopis in a historical context where they performed in school uniforms and on Olympic tracks, competing against the fastest runners from around the world. He shows how Hopis have always traveled and traversed worlds, but their experiences reflect change and impacts as trailblazers. Warik'aya have always held honor and respect among their own communities. Gilbert explains that they "ran as representatives of their clans and believed that their swiftness of foot would benefit their people with much-needed rain and a bountiful harvest" (p. 6). This belief allowed the warik'aya to cultivate perseverance, resilience, ingenuity, and humility. Gilbert delineates how these qualities and values have embodied Hopi traditions of running, while Hopi runners have pushed boundaries and navigated new spaces through generations. [End Page 622] In Paths in the Rainforest (1990), Jan Vansina expounds on an allegory that applies to Hopi Runners: tradition is a "two-faced" Janus with both the "petrified face of continuity and the mobile face of change" (p. 33). Hopi runners carried traditions from the past but changed them on their courses as trailblazers. The book focuses on the celebrated generations of male Hopi runners from 1886–1940, which was a time of major transformation among Hopis, as the United States asserted governance over and eventually extended citizenship to Hopis and other Native peoples. A new era for Hopis brought with it new challenges. With new running opportunities, Hopis remembered for whom and why Hopis ran despite forces to capitulate to the United States and its citizenry. Although American education and sports upheld promises of citizenship, regardless of the realities of voting restrictions and ongoing wardship status for Native Americans, Hopi runners' allegiances and identities remained first tied to their people and families. At school, running served as a form of constant resistance, and when they returned home they ran through desert landscapes, from the mesas to broader horizons, marking new trails along the way. In her praise of Hopi Runners, Hopi linguist and cultural expert Sheilah E. Nicholas, of the Sunforehead Clan from the Village of Songoopavi on Second Mesa, stressed a Hopi concept that epitomizes the book and its focus on warik'aya. Nicholas notes: "In the Hopi perspective, these individuals as, runner scouts as well as messengers, assumed a purposeful role captured in the Hopi word, màataknawisa—to go out into the larger world to reveal and demonstrate—this understanding of running and expression of humility."1 Hopi runners embody màataknawisa, and implicit from its definition is the trailblazing legacy that the warik'aya upheld, prior to and during their entanglements with boarding schools and other U.S. systems. Gilbert refers to the "wave of migrations," which contextualizes the broader history of Hopi movements. Hopis have passed on...