In recent years, there have been a number of dramas and documentaries detailing the appalling mistreatment of Native American children forcibly held in church- and state-run Indian Boarding Schools — ranging from the Taylor Sheridan-produced “1923” to the Oscar-nominated “Sugarcane” — for such historical overviews to comprise a subgenre. Such eye-opening depictions of 19th and 20th-century atrocities, much like the contemporary accounts on the issue of Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women, are not merely instructive, but necessary. Trouble is, that wealth of resources means an exceptional documentary like “Remaining Native” runs the risk of being passed over by viewers who assume there’s nothing more to be said on the subject. That would be unfortunate and misguided.
Director Paige Bethmann’s technically polished and utterly absorbing film skillfully forges a link between past and present by focusing on Kutoven “Ku” Stevens, a 17-year-old Native American determined to earn a University of Oregon scholarship in track — despite his living on the Yerington Paiute reservation in Northwest Nevada, a place rarely if ever visited by college scouts, and being the only cross-country runner at a high school that lacks a track coach.
Yu’s parents strongly support his pursuit of his daunting goal — especially as they attend track meets where Yu runs so far ahead of his competitors he appears to be moving into a different zip code. And he’s lucky enough to be spotted by Lupe Cabada, a running coach who recognizes Yu’s formidable abilities, and guides him toward competing in meets where the young runner can be seen by the right people.
But there’s more to Yu’s obsession than his OU dreams. As he runs across the rural Nevada landscapes, he is driven by stories he has been told about his great-grandfather, Frank Quinn, who at age eight fled from confinement at an especially brutal Indian Boarding School by literally running away — 50 miles away, to be precise — after two failed attempts at escape.
“Maybe they got tired of chasing him,” Yu speculates. Many other students, however, weren’t nearly so lucky. Indeed, as “Remaining Native” progresses, and the first waves of accounts about unmarked graves discovered at former Indian Boarding Schools hit the news, the horrors are exposed and the estimated death count escalates.
One distraught Native American interviewee asks: “What kind of school has a cemetery?” That question is answered — repeatedly, in uncompromising fashion — as Yu and director Bethmann speak with survivors and their families about the physical and emotional scars that they continue to carry.
There are two different narratives at play in “Remaining Native,” but they are so deftly entwined that each reinforces the impact of the other. Yu freely admits that he yearns to leave rural Nevada and sever his ties to the land, so he can broaden his horizons and live independently. (His father, although sympathetic, bemoans the “brain drain” of young Native Americans from reservations.) It’s engaging to cheer for Yu as, to paraphrase the 1969 tagline for “Downhill Racer,” he measures how fast he has to go to get from where he’s at.
At the same time, however, Yu, a charismatic young man whose ambition never seems to overwhelm his compassion, cannot, and will not, turn his back entirely on the past. “Remaining Native” resolves the first narrative in an emotionally and dramatically satisfying fashion. Long before that though, we begin to follow a parallel plotline: Yu’s arguably more important campaign to establish an event — Remembrance Run, a two-day, 50-mile cross-country race — mapped to follow the escape route taken decades earlier by Frank Quinn, and intended to remind the living and honor the dead.
“You can’t change the past,” says one participant. “But we can sure as hell try to change it moving forward.”
Sometimes, Bethmann suggests, remaining Native is the best revenge.