A new film focuses on a Nevada teenager chasing his dreams. He hopes to become a college runner — all while covering the path his great-grandfather took to escape his situation. The documentary is coming to the Salem Film Festival in Massachusetts next weekend. The coming-of-age doc follows 17-year-old Ku Stevens, a Paiute Native American, across the reservation one step at a time. The film is called “Remaining Native,” and it just won two awards at the South by Southwest Festival. WAMC's Samantha Simmons spoke with director Paige Bethmann, a Native American with roots in the Mohawk and Oneida Tribes and a Rochester native, about how she connected with the film.
My family is Mohawk in Oneida. My dad's side comes from the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation in upstate New York. And, you know, my great grandmother went to a boarding school at a very, you know, young age, and it left such an impression and really harmed my family over the years. And so, at the time in 2021 I was working at Vox media in New York City, doing a lot of like current affairs and, you know, long form documentaries through their studios department, when the news broke in 2021 about the unmarked graves of Indigenous children in Kamloops, Canada. And then, I think for me, as the responses around me being like, wow, I didn't know this happened, or, you know, just people being really surprised. But I also saw reactions from family members and folks in my community, you know, starting to share these stories again, and the stories that I grew up knowing about my own family. And so, I came across an article that was written by the Reno Gazette journal, which is based here in Reno, and it was about this kid and his ambitions to run 50 miles to honor his great grandfather. And I thought, wow. Like, what an incredible story. Also like the awareness of this teenager wanting to do something for their family. And so, it really moved me, because I thought, well, 'what can I do for my family? How can I honor my great grandmother?' And so, the idea was to go out and document, you know, his 50-mile journey across the desert. And so, I moved out here to Reno and followed him through that journey, and then found this, like deeper story about his ambitions of wanting to be an elite athlete and go to Oregon, and just where he comes from, he had no support, no coach, no team, just had this connection and this memory, really fueling him to want to work hard and train harder and ended up being a beautiful experience following him for over a year and seeing his dreams come true.
I was looking at his Instagram this week because I'm a runner, so I'm interested in it. And that's always the dream that people like when I was in high school, every good runner wanted to go to Oregon and whatever. So, he's still on the team, which is very exciting. So, have you kept in contact? His parents were worried about him leaving and not wanting to come back after he got like that, quote, unquote, taste of freedom, of outside world in a different culture. So, have you kept in contact? And how do they how are they feeling about it now?
Just one correction. So, Ku actually is going to be transferring to the University of Washington, so he's going to move on to another opportunity, which he's very excited about. But yeah, I'm very connected to COVID family. You know, I still am here in Reno. I've been living here for the last three years, and they live about an hour south, but his mom, Misty came on our team as impact coordinator, so she's been working with us directly with the film, to do a lot of community outreach and organize community screenings, and just to really keep you know, spreading the story around locally, and even doing some really cool partnerships with other organizations that we have plans for. But I think, you know, there's always the fear, I think, from parents that, like, you know, their kids are going to leave and never come home. But I think, you know, coup has a connection here to this land. You know, he's been coming back the last three years and actually doing the remembrance run. He did it by himself, completely alone last summer, just because he wanted to, you know, keep up his own obligation to his grandfather's story, to be able to honor that, you know, with or without a camera crew following him around.
Like you said, your family is native. So, what was it like to kind of immerse yourself in coup and his family's culture? How is it different from what you grew up knowing?
I mean, I think, like there's a constant, stereotype that's like all Native Americans are the same, and, you know, that's so far from the truth, like we're not a monolith. So, coming to coups community, you know, I came in with trying to withhold my own understanding in some degrees. You know, it's like they have different practices. You know, they have different creation stories, like I was really here to learn, but I think there's like an inherent idea of respect and trust building. You know, I didn't want to come here and ask all these questions about boarding schools and then leave every time. So that was why I moved here, to be able to be a part of the community. And, you know, not even film, you know, we would go fishing and, you know, coos. A dad took me pine nut picking, which is one of their traditional foods. And it was just really nice to be able to exchange in. And you know, my own experiences being, you know, Mohawk and Oneida with, you know, their experience being Paiute. So, it was really nice to like share with one another, and sadly, to talk about our experiences with, you know, the boarding schools and those effects and harms on our communities. But it was really healing overall, because I think being able to talk about it now and even through the process of making the film, has opened up stories with my own family, and has been able to kind of cultivate a space to be able to share without sort of feeling like I'm just, you know, bringing up trauma just because. And so, I felt like it was really nice. You know, coups father is a very he's a spiritual leader here. He held a lot of ceremony for us throughout the process, and that was really nice to be able to connect that way with his family.
So, this movie is going to different film festivals. It was out South by Southwest. And for us, it's going to be at Salem that's the regional aspect of this. What do you hear when you bring it to the larger audiences? How are people who aren't Native American connecting with this?
At the end of the day, the story is really about a family. It's a coming-of-age story about a kid with a dream. And I think a lot of people can relate to that. You know, everybody has dreams. Everyone has aspirations to, you know, do whatever it is they set their mind to. And so, I think for Ku, having him be introduced in the film as a runner, and then learning about his community, and this history that he carries with him, I think kind of opens the door to let people to sit in and be excited about the sports element of the film, but really, you know, take time to listen and understand a different perspective that they might not have heard before.
And you also directed Native America. It was a TV series. This one [Remaining Native] isn't your first work in that topic. Why do you keep working on this topic, and do you see that continuing as your career builds?
For Native America, I got asked to direct an episode called Women role, which was following four Indigenous women being complete bad asses in different disciplines. And it was a beautiful experience to be able to do that, because I grew up surrounded by strong native women, and I think to be able to follow these, you know, for ladies and on their journeys and doing, you know, ecological preservation and even in governance and fashion, it was really cool to be able to explore those things. You know, I think I don't, I don't think I'm going to say like, oh, I'm going to only tell native stories from now on. But it's, it's a part of who I am. I think any perspective or any topic that I approach my work comes through a lens of my own experiences, and so that it just happens to be Native American. And I do think that native stories are needed now more than ever when we think about, you know, what's going on with climate change, and you know, even politically and just, how do we take care of each other and take care of the land? A lot of our stories hold those solutions, and they show positive relationships to land and to community. And I think those stories are really needed as we navigate you know the world as we know it today.