Napi’s Run raising awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Men

It all started as a dream for Indigenous runner Johnny Bare Shin Bone, and now he has been joined by a group of people who are running across Canada for an amazing cause.

They are participating in an event called Napi’s Run, which is a relay race running initiative.

The group left St. John’s Newfoundland on April 12th and just passed Bassano, Alberta.

They are hoping to make it to Victoria, B.C by July 5th which would be Bare Shin Bone’s 65th birthday.

We caught up with the organizers virtually to talk to them about their long trek across the country.

Bare Shin Bone says the running journey is meant to raise awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Men.

“Just to commemorate them and how it affects the whole family. How it hurts the whole family, and just the awareness. And not only that, the opioid crisis out there too. It’s right across Canada, too. And how education native our way, and in a Caucasian way, that’s really important about that.”

Ramona Big Head, one of the runners, says she is taking part because of a relative who was murdered in the past.

“The impetus for all of this was looking at my sister who lost her boy. He was murdered a few years ago. And so that is still very real for our family. We invited people along the way, the local people. It doesn’t matter if you’re Indigenous or non-Indigenous, we invited anybody who would like to run with us. Just for example, yesterday, a lady from Brooks, Alberta, never met her before. She had been following our page on Facebook, Napi’s Run, And she asked, can I run? Can I walk for a bit? And we invited her. And she walked probably about five kilometres for us in the cold yesterday.”

The group is not raising any funds for the run and organizers told us they have averaged a total of 80-100 kilometres per day since they started Napi’s Run.

The Blood Tribe sponsored the runners providing food, vehicles and gas money for the team.