Remaining Native: Running Through History
Remaining Native, a film by Paige Bethmann, was a juried pick for the 2025 Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride and a recipient of a 2024 Mountainfilm Commitment Grant. Mountainfilm shares that it was “honored to include Remaining Native in [its] 2025 film lineup.” The movie centers on high school athlete Ku Stevens, who chases his running aspirations while exploring his heritage and grappling with the lasting wounds left by Indian boarding schools across generations.
Photos courtesy of Paige Bethmann
ORIGIN STORY
It’s 2021, in Nevada’s high desert near Reno, and 17-year-old Ku Stevens, a talented Yerington Paiute runner, has a dream of competing for the University of Oregon. He’s training hard and it’s paying off in the local arena even though it’s unclear if he’s fast enough yet to be recruited. But there’s something else on his mind, and it bubbles up often while he runs: his family history, the trauma his great grandfather experienced as a child when federal officials took him away to the Stewart Indian School in Carson City, Nevada, 50 miles from his family. Stevens decides that the only way he can understand, is to run it. What did it feel like for his 8-year-old great grandfather to run away from the boarding school, trying to get home, to cover that distance alone over rough terrain? Stevens plans the route — from Yerington to Stewart — and invites others to join and witness this experience.
Across the country in New York, Paige Bethmann, a Haudenosaunee filmmaker, hears about Stevens’ plan. She’s moved. “When the news broke that year of the 215 unmarked graves of native children found in Kamloops, Canada, it brought up a lot of memories for me, of my grandmother telling me stories about her mother who attended an Indian boarding school and how that really affected my family and my community,” Bethmann shares. “I had just lost my grandmother, and was figuring out how to channel my own grief and also honoring my own family story.”
Bethmann takes her camera and small crew out to Nevada to witness Stevens’ run, and the family invites her to stay and document his story — both his journey as a competitive runner, but also to follow how he explores the generational trauma from the Stewart School. “When you come from an Indigenous community,” she explains, “you can’t just show up and leave and take something, especially when you’re asking questions around historical trauma.” She stayed in Nevada for three years.
CREATION
What comes from Bethmann’s time in Yerington with Stevens and his family is artful storytelling inspired by her grandmother, carefully honed to create the film Remaining Native. “My grandmother, Barbara Bethmann, was a traditional Mohawk storyteller. When I was a little girl, I would listen to her tell stories, and most of the time they were our creation stories: how the birds got their songs, and the story of maple syrup. I was always lit up by those,” Bethmann says. The cinematography speaks to this. The natural beauty of the landscape is uniquely captured by Bethmann.
There are so many ways to tell a story, especially one that examines hidden abuse and trauma. Bethmann’s intention is to spark conversations and healing. “When I started making the film, I reached out to the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, which is at the forefront of trying to advocate for descendants and survivors of boarding schools,” she says. “I really wanted to make sure that I was coming in with this aspect of community care and not just viewing it as like a historical account, but something that is actively influencing our lives and today. I tried to stay close to this story of Ku’s great grandfather and not speak for anybody else’s experience.”
At some parts in the film, Stevens narrates, speaking directly to the viewer to “imagine you are 8 years old.” Bethmann says it was important for the film that viewers new to the history in this story emotionally connect. When she asked Stevens how he wanted people to feel, he said, “I want them to imagine you’re running down this hill and you’re almost home, and you see your valley, and you see your family there.”
Remaining Native is a film about generational trauma, but it’s also an inspiring film about an athlete wanting something that seems unattainable and working hard to earn it. We follow Stevens’ journey racing cross country and track through the end of his high school years, with stakes high at each event as he tries to secure his future. Bethmann talks about how important running is in the Native community. “There’s always been an inherent understanding that running is medicine. The first time I saw Ku run, he was like a gazelle. It’s really hard to show how hard he’s working — he just looks so at ease. I was thinking about how, when he’s running at home, on the land, he’s running on top of this deep memory, and I had to figure out how to visually articulate what ancestral muscle memory looks like and feels like with the elements of breathing and the sound of the natural world,” she says. On top of the embodiment of running in Remaining Native, there’s the tension and suspense of Stevens achieving his competitive goals — complete with exciting track scenes, cross country finishes, college visits, proud parents and screaming crowds, a thread that draws the viewer through the intertwining stories of past and present.
SPARKING CONVERSATION AND COMMUNITY
After 2021, Stevens’ 50 mile “Remembrance Run” became an annual multi-day community event that the film highlights as inviting both the Native and greater running communities from far and wide. Bethmann comments that “I’ve always wanted to make sure that the film leaves viewers with hope and understanding that the best thing we can do to support Indigenous people is by letting Indigenous people be Indigenous. I really love sharing the film with Native youth, and having people see themselves reflected in the film, and knowing that we have to support this younger generation coming up to be able to step into these roles like Ku did, is really powerful.”
As the film tours, it often holds 5k fun runs in conjunction with the screening, including a run sponsored by Nike at the Remaining Native world premiere at South by Southwest. “I love when we can gather locally where people can run with us and participate in a way that gives them some semblance of what the Remembrance Run is like. That’s been the most meaningful part for me.”
Originally published in the spring 2026 issue of Spoke+Blossom.