INDIAN LEADER PLANS TRANSCONTINENTAL RUN TO INSPIRE HARMONY

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 5, 1992                   TAG: 9201050149
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CINCINNATI                                LENGTH: Medium
INDIAN LEADER PLANS TRANSCONTINENTAL RUN TO INSPIRE HARMONY
Dennis Banks wants to spread a message, a big one about world harmony. To get it out, he's reaching into American Indian tradition and organizing a Sacred Run the length and breadth of the Western Hemisphere.
Banks, best known as co-founder in 1968 of the American Indian Movement and now its national director, has traded in his militant label of two decades ago. Inspired by a 1977 meeting of American Indian elders, he directs the long-distance running event with a spiritual purpose.
The objective isn't to find a winner, he said, but understanding and unity.
"The relationship between human beings and the planet - that relationship is called harmony," Banks said from the Sacred Run office in Newport, Ky. "It's very sacred harmony.
"We've started to get away from that harmony. As a result there was a lot of destruction. Streams were being polluted. The air was being polluted. Trees were being hurt."
At the meeting of elders, he heard the call for a return to traditional American Indian ceremonies to renew harmony.
"All throughout history, in every society, we've used running as a means of getting messages from village to village," he said. "I felt that we should revive the old traditional way."
Banks organized his first spiritual run in 1978, from Davis, Calif., to Los Angeles. Every year since, he has directed runs across the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan.
The plans for this year are his most ambitious.
In April, one group will run north from Tierra Del Fuego in the southern tip of South America to cover the 5,000 miles to Santa Fe, N.M. The team will stop for a month in Mexico to participate in a celebration of indigenous peoples.
In June, a second team will leave the Siberian side of the Bering Strait, cross the waterway by canoe and run south through Alaska, Canada, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona to Santa Fe - a 9,500-mile stretch.
About the same time, a team of Penobscot Indians will run west from Maine to Santa Fe, while a fourth goes the distance from San Francisco to Santa Fe, where all four converge Oct. 8.
Each day, the 10 to 12 runners on each team together will cover 100 to 150 miles a day. They'll be carrying a leather-wrapped sacred staff topped by four feathers symbolizing the four directions.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB