Fort Robinson Outbreak Run: Running for history and a future
23.02.12
When yesterday's bone-chilling cold hit Tamia Two Moons, it
didn't faze her.
The 12-year-old kept running along U.S. Highway 385 through the
Black Hills, carrying the flag of the Cheyenne Nation and thinking
of her ancestors, who faced the same run over a century ago without
the convenience of running shoes and a warm bus waiting.
"I really didn't mind the cold," she said. "I kind of enjoyed
running."
Tamia, who lives in Lame Deer, Mont., on the Northern Cheyenne
Indian Reservation, is one of 90 children braving January
temperatures to run a relay from Fort Robinson in Nebraska to
Busby, Mont. They stopped in Rapid City Wednesday night after
running almost to Deadwood from a lunch stop at Crazy Horse. Today,
the runners will take off from Deadwood toward Spearfish, and they
are scheduled to arrive Saturday at their final destination.
Montana residents Philip Whiteman, Jr. and Lynette Two Bulls
started the Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run in 1996 so youth
on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana could
remember a tragic January run more than a century earlier.
Source: Rapid City Journal