Final Rating: 3.5/5
In summer 2022, Kutoven “Ku” Stevens began the annual Remembrance Run, a two-day, 50-mile event in rural Nevada, in which participants run from the Yerington Paiute Reservation to the Stewart Indian School. After hearing about the discovery of 215 unmarked graves of indigenous children at a residential school in Kamloops, Stevens started the run as a tribute to his great grandfather, who ran away from boarding school when he was 8 years old. It’s not only to honour Ku’s ancestry, but for all those who resisted colonialism, and for the ones who couldn’t.
For her debut documentary Remaining Native, director Paige Bethmann integrated herself into Stevens’ life to create a moving portrait of the athlete and his place in Paiute history. With roots as far back as 100 years, Remaining Native is nevertheless a documentary about an evolving topic, its subjects often as uncertain about their role within their culture as they are about the future of their own family.
From the opening moments, Remaining Native juxtaposes Ku’s story with that of his great-grandfather. Over footage of him running, Ku imagines what the 50-mile journey through the untouched desert would have been like as a child escaping a boarding school.
But the run is an isolated incident. His great-grandfather’s escape from the Stewart Indian School can only happen because he was there in the first place. Over pictures of students at Stewart, Remaining Native talks about the horrors of Indian boarding schools – the US version of Canada’s residential schools. Narrated entirely by Stevens, Remaining Native’s effectively the toll boarding schools took on indigenous populations. “They cut your hair off,” Ku narrates, “they scrub your skin with chemicals, you’re whittled down until you fail to recognize yourself.”
“My great-grandfather decided to run.”
By running away, Ku’s great-grandfather avoided losing himself. A hundred years later, Ku and his family remain proudly Paiute, and Remaining Native highlights the family’s relationship to the land and their heritage.
When Bethmann picks up with Ku, his goal is to attend the University of Oregon, the best university for track and field in the US. In pursuit of a scholarship, the film follows Stevens through training sessions and track meets. In addition to Ku, Remaining Native contains plenty of short interviews with coach Lupe Cabada, who adds tidbits about what goes into track at a competitive level.
His parents are worried about losing their son after he goes to college. Bethmann places the Stevens’ thoughts in the context of the family’s heritage. In the film’s most memorable monologue, Ku’s father Delmar mentions learning about “brain drain” in college – a phenomenon where people leave home to get educated, and don’t come back. “All that precious knowledge is gone.” To hear him tell it, Delmar got educated in order to come back and make his home a better place. More than just missing his son, he wonders if Ku’s intentions are the same.
The latter half of the film centres around the first Remembrance Run. As the Stevens plan out, advertise, and finally go on the 50-mile run, Ku becomes more vocal about his Paiute heritage. Ku also goes into more detail about his great-grandfather’s life, tracing the legacy of Stewart Indian School through the years. When the run finally happens, the number of people showing up far exceeds Ku’s initial expectations. And yet, the number of people is still relatively small. The turnout to the Run is large enough that Ku clearly smashed his initial expectations, but small enough that it still feels familial.
Remaining Native’s core narrative of a teen about to leave for college narrows in on a specific experience in order to make the broader theme of heritage hit harder. Bethmann doesn’t aim to tell the entire history of colonization in Nevada, nor to make a comprehensive documentary on track and field, but in focusing on Ku Stevens, does a fantastic job covering each.
Remaining Native was seen during the 2025 imagineNATIVE film festival.
