Hopi Runners: Crossing the Terrain between Indian and American by Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert (review)

On the day before I began my field research for my dissertation, I sat with anthropologist Peter Nabokov in his office at UCLA. He looked at me, smiled, and quoted William Blake: "When you get out there, I don't want you to get lost in the narrowness of your topic. I want you to see the world in a grain of sand." This is what historian and American Indian studies professor Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert has done in his 2018 monograph, Hopi Runners: Crossing the Terrain between Indian and American. Through his careful research and dedication to his topic, he has opened up a world in which the study of running imparts much-needed insight into Hopi culture, tradition, and society.

Gilbert provides the reader with an enlightened understanding of the ever-changing relationship between Hopituskwa and the outside world. His work uses running as a window into the history of Hopi intergenerational relationships and the legacy of Indigenous runners who brought their way of running as a spiritual and cultural practice to boarding schools, American foot races, and international sporting competitions. He argues that "between 1908 and 1936, the cultural identity of Hopi runners challenged white perceptions of Natives and modernity and placed them in a context that had national and international dimensions" (p. 15). Indeed, even for people who did not have the language to articulate it, the many Hopi runners winning prestigious track and field competitions deeply challenged white concepts of center and periphery, racist notions of ethnicity and innate ability, and historians' conceptions of the relationship between mobility, modernity, and religious practice.

As a Hopi runner himself, the author does well to connect his work with that of Hopi cultural historian Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma; Hopi scholar Edmund Nequatewa; Hopi anthropologist, artist, and judge Emory Sekaquaptewa; Ngāti Pūkenga scholar Brendan Hokowhitu; Hopi author Albert Yava; and former Carlisle student Amy G. Adams, among others. He builds on Nabokov's Indian Running (1981) as well as the work of historian Brian Collier, editor Ben Fogelberg, journalist and runner Christopher McDougall, and sport historian Mark Dyreson. Gilbert honors these scholars' contributions to the field while covering new ground in examining the role of colonial encroachment, industrialization, the development of carceral boarding schools, and the enduring strength of Indigenous families and communities in the history of Hopi runners.

Gilbert's reading of Hopi runner and Olympian Louis Tewanima's life is one of the most powerful parts of the text. In chapters two and three, Gilbert uses Tewanima's experiences to highlight how athletes who competed off-reservation were able to navigate "between the 'interstices' of their religious beliefs about footraces and American ideologies of sport" (p. 68). Tewanima's story, like the stories of many other runners, reveals the extent to which liminality defined the existence of Indigenous runners in the early twentieth century.

Tewanima survived forced incarceration at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, ran in the 1908 Olympics for a nation that "considered him and his people to be wards of the US government," and was lampooned by racist periodicals like New York's Globe and Commercial Advertiser, which insinuated in a 1909 publication that he learned to run fast because he and his people had to out-run colonial murderers in order to survive (pp. 69, 73). And yet, Tewanima consistently outran hundreds—and sometimes even up to a thousand—of his white counterparts in various races across the world, including two Olympic Games. He used his running to "bring honor to his people," to maintain his close familial ties and connections to the land, and to honor the religious and cultural practices that attended Hopi distance running (p. 71).

Gilbert's careful explorations of the lives of many different Hopi runners reminds the reader that "Hopis ran in American races because they wanted to, choosing to live in the moment by taking advantage...