Kainai Nation runners reach Pacific Ocean after cross-country run for MMIWM
Global News
Runners from Kainai Nation completed their cross-Canada run for missing and murdered Indigenous women and men and Mother Earth after setting off in St. John's, N.L, on April 12.
“Hi Terry, I told you I was gonna make it,” said runner John Bare Shin Bone as he tapped the back of the Terry Fox statue at Mile 0 in Victoria, B.C.
It’s been a long 86-day journey for the 65-year-old who set off from St. John’s, Newfoundland on April 12 to complete a cross-Canada run for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Men (MMIWM) and Mother Earth.
Napi’s Run 2023 — named after the Blackfoot trickster — came from a dream Bare Shin Bone had where he saw a highway road sign that read “St. John’s Newfoundland 58 kilometers away.”
The Blood Reserve runner questioned why he was seeing the sign when he was in southern Alberta.
“I’m on the west … but my spirit was way on the other side … it was such a beautiful dream that lasted right through the night and I was running,” said Bare Shin Bone.
Then he thought about what it might be like to run across Canada and decided to do it for his nephew, Jovian Big Head, who was murdered in 2009.
Bare Shin Bone has been running and road racing since the 1980s and Terry Fox is a huge inspiration of his. “When my knees would give up I’d think about him and run with a double hop,” he said. “(Terry Fox) gave me so much confidence to keep going, never to stop.”
The run was completed relay-style by a dedicated team from the Blood Reserve and led by Bare Shin Bone; people — both Indigenous and non — would join along the way.