Send a Runner: A Navajo Honors the Long Walk

by Edison Eskeets, Jim Kristofic

Overview

2022 Southwest Books of the Year

The Navajo tribe, the Diné, are the largest tribe in the United States and live across the American Southwest. But over a century ago, they were nearly wiped out by the Long Walk, a forced removal of most of the Diné people to a military-controlled reservation in New Mexico. The summer of 2018 marked the 150th anniversary of the Navajos' return to their homelands. One Navajo family and their community decided to honor that return. Edison Eskeets and his family organized a ceremonial run from Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, to Santa Fé, New Mexico, in order to deliver a message and to honor the survivors of the Long Walk.

Both exhilarating and punishing, Send a Runner tells the story of a Navajo family using the power of running to honor their ancestors and the power of history to explain why the Long Walk happened. From these forces, they might also seek the vision of how the Diné—their people—will have a future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826364548
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	09/01/2022
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	611,555
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Edison Eskeets is a former All-American runner, coach, artist, and teacher who has been running in the Southwest for over fifty years. He served as the head of school and the dean of students for the nationally recognized Native American Preparatory School. He is the first Navajo trader to manage the Hubbell Trading Post, the oldest continuously operating trading post in Navajo country. He lives between Ganado, Arizona, and northern New Mexico.




Jim Kristofic grew up on the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona. He has written for the Navajo Times, Arizona Highways, Native Peoples Magazine, and High Country News. He is the author of The Hero Twins: A Navajo-English Story of the Monster Slayers, Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life, Medicine Women: The Story of the First Native American Nursing School, and Reservation Restless (all published by UNM Press). He lives in Taos, New Mexico.

Editorial Reviews

"Send a Runner: A Navajo Honors the Long Walk is a positive message about a tragic chapter in history."—Paul Willeto, Tribal College Journal

"No dry retelling of history. . . . equal parts uplifting, disturbing, funny, and compelling."—Farmington Daily Times

"The story of the Diné is intricately braided into the story of Eskeets's run."—Mackenzie Chase, Arizona Daily Sun

"[Edison Eskeets's] collaboration with skilled writer Jim Kristofic uniquely interweaves the Navajo people's painful history with personal commitment and, ultimately, optimism for the future. . . . Kristofic's engaging writing style achieves an effective back-and-forth between occasional vignettes from different points in Eskeets's past and frequent episodes—often humorous, occasionally poignant—from out on the road."—John Kissane, PodiumRunner

"Beautifully penned."—Toni Reavis

"In this eloquent narrative . . . the past and the present interweave fluidly."—Taos News

"The authors pass the baton back and forth, their relay race in book form crossing the finish line with aplomb. Its language observes the color of the modern world alongside the nuance of complex history. This is not a parachute job, but people who live and feel right here."—Julie Ann Grimm, Santa Fe Reporter

"With starkly beautiful prose, the authors bring all of this to urgent life, vividly depicting the numerous outbreaks of brutal violence and clearly demonstrating the remarkable resiliency of the Diné. . . . A unique, important addition to the literature on the Navajo."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"A beautiful book, inspiring, deep. Yes, and filled with sadness as well, but it is ultimately a sadness that serves not to dispirit, but rather to hearten, to inspire the resolve that keeps memories alive and dreams empowered."—Daily Kos

"This is one of the most exciting—and beautifully written—books that I've ever read. I have lived on the Navajo Reservation and trained with their best runners. Eskeets and Kristofic capture the beauty of that land and the magical power of running through it in a way that I've never encountered before. It's an extraordinary book of great hope and promise. I could not get enough of it."—Sebastian Junger, New York Times bestselling author of WAR, The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea, and Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

"In describing an aging Navajo's long-distance run to mark how a painful episode in that tribe's past ends in triumph, Eskeets and Kristofic revisit a noteworthy chapter in Native American history. As he tells it, an old story lives again as a deeply human, contemporary event of lasting magnitude."—Paul G. Zolbrod, author of Diné bahané: The Navajo Creation Story

"As Edison Eskeets commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Navajo Long Walk, a forced march by the US Government into captivity, with a punishing fifteen-day, 330-mile long-distance run, he is followed by the history of his people and their resistance and courage, and he is accompanied by the spirits of those who have come before. Eskeets and Jim Kristofic take us along on a journey of heroic physical sacrifice in all its cultural and spiritual significance in Send a Runner."—Bruce J. Gjeltema, University of New Mexico-Gallup

From the Publisher

03/19/2021

In this work, Eskeets and Kristofic (Navajos Wear Nikes) collaborate to tell the story of Eskeets completing an ultrarun to honor survivors of the Long Walk; the book also includes a condensed history of the Diné people. The authors explain the history of the Long Walk, when, between 1863 and 1866, the U.S. military marched Diné men, women, and children 250 to 450 milesfrom their ancestral lands to the Bosque Redondo Reservation in current-day New Mexico. Eskeets and Kristofic do an effective job weaving stories together with metaphors for acknowledging pain—both the physical toll of Eskeets's run and the inherited trauma passed down through generations of his Diné family. The poetic passages by Kristofic (who grew up on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona but isn't an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation) thoroughly trace these long-lasting impacts. The book uses appropriate terms from the Diné language to refer to the people and places of the Navajo Nation. Possibly the only deficit of this book is that it doesn't explore in more detail the health care inequities facing the Navajo Nation and other Indigenous peoples in the U.S. VERDICT This memoir is a solid read for patrons who would like to learn more about the Long Walk, and for patrons who would like to know more about Diné culture.—Allison Gallaspy, Tulane University, LA

Library Journal

★ 2021-01-19
The story of a 59-year-old Diné (Navajo) man and his 16-day, 330-mile run to honor the Long Walk of the Navajo.

Co-written by Eskeets, a runner, coach, and artist, and Kristofic, a Taos-based journalist who grew up on a Navajo reservation in Arizona, the book follows two stories: first, Eskeets’ plan to run 330 miles (“a marathon a day”) to commemorate the Long Walk, “the forced removal of most of the Diné people to a military-controlled reservation on the Pecos River in south-central New Mexico” between 1864 and 1868; second, a chronicle of the Long Walk in historical context. Eskeets, supported by friends and family throughout the run, and Kristofic, his friend, provide fascinating portraits of both the beauty and physical punishment of the journey, smoothly alternating with a history of the Diné people. The authors recount the grim historical realities that faced the Diné over the centuries: arrival of the Spanish, kidnapping and selling of Diné children into slavery, murder and betrayal, the movement of White Americans across their territory, and the continued attacks on their people. With starkly beautiful prose, the authors bring all of this to urgent life, vividly depicting the numerous outbreaks of brutal violence and clearly demonstrating the remarkable resiliency of the Diné. “Go seek out ‘The Flood’ by Robert Frost. Read that poem,” they write. “In the time required to read that poem, fifteen people are murdered outside Fort Fauntleroy….The shells explode over them and shrapnel pops through their bodies. Twenty people run no more forever.” The authors’ chronicle of Eskeets’ impressive feat highlights the otherworldly beauty of the American Southwest, from Canyon de Chelly (a “spiritual center” once described by mythologist Joseph Campbell as “the most sacred place on earth”) in Arizona to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

A unique, important addition to the literature on the Navajo.

Kirkus Reviews