pattiboston227

Hmm, great question. You'll shame me with my answer. I met Billy Mills at the start of the NIKE Oregon Marathon is Sept 1981 {?}. A Nike Rep brought me over from the starting line to introduce us. I hadn't heard of Billy....I know, I know...shame on me. There was so much for me to learn and learning about the men's events and runners at the time were not high on my list, lol.

Billy said "Hi Patti, nice to meet you and good luck to you today." I asked the NIKE rep, "Who's that?" I was given a brief rundown: Gold medalist, 10km, Sioux. WOW! I thought a Native...I was so happy to have met him. The only other Native American I was aware of was Tarzan Brown.

Billy Mills and have done speaking engagements with him over the years and I have huge respect.

I didn't feel like I was carrying on legacies while I was running, only after my career had ended...I was so involved doing what I was doing that making a legacy wasn't very high on my radar. These days I understand that I was representing my family, my community, my gender, my tribe, but most importantly, myself.

Edit: I should add that I wasn't raised with a Native American identity. It was frowned upon...when I was in the first grade, we went around the classroom and said what we were. "Irish, Scottish, Irish" (everyone was Irish). I said I was Indian. I got war whoops and got teased for the rest of the day...I went crying to my mother and said "Mom, the kids are teasing me!" She smacked me and said "What did you say that for? Serves you right. Keep your mouth shut." It wasn't until I got older that I started to embrace my heritage.

Have a goal! Stick to it. Even if that goal is just running a mile a day...but dream bigger. If I could do it over again, I would have dreamed bigger.

Ohmygoodness...yes...Oops. Yeah, ok, I said it. Lol!! Thankfully I had a strong sense of belonging to the running community. The New England runners, a hardy bunch, mygoodness, they are and were terrific to me and for me. They never gave me an inch. I had to fight for every single step to beat them. That was the guys...lol they guys were tough and the women.... Joanie gold medal winner, Lynn Jenning 7 time World Cross Coountry Champion. I cut my teeth.

It was only when I started to get outside of NE that I had a few brushes with being dissed,, not so much as disrespect like they were mean to me. More like, if I beat them, they were disappointed in themselves that somebody like me beat them. Whateer that meant. Which didn't make sense to me.

And yes, it did give me a stiffer chin. A chip on the shoulder probably. Though I did imagine drawing a line on the starting line and daring somebody to cross it. "Go ahead"...LOL (In my mind, not verbally.) It was a something I did. I had no idea of the hierarchy in running. Who beat who at a college meet, who was expected to win and who would lead. I more or less rocked the boat so to speak.

I was concerned then, I'm concerned now, especially with my daughter...I run at different times. I run different loops. I run defensively. I try not to set a pattern that people can follow, I know that can be tough with schedules. I run with a dog (or two...or three!).

Most importantly, I tell people my loop and where I'm going. I run a lot in residential neighborhoods or in the trails surrounding my house, so usually I only see deer. I get honked at sometimes.

My daughter deals with it a lot. She wears headphones (listens to Hamilton all the time...) and ignores them, that seems to work for her.

It's sad to say that I think I'm desensitized to it now, because I dealt with so much of it. The only thing I can do is be as safe as possible, as defensive as possible, and educate my son and husband about their behavior. My son is wonderful, a wonderful man, and my husband is just the sweetest. (his nickname is Saint Dan.)

I wish the world wasn't like this. I'm so sorry wife doesn't feel safe. It's an awful feeling. I went through most of my career not feeling safe. I was chased, I've been stalked, I've dealt with verbal and physical harassment, and nobody said anything. It was just something par for the course, like something expected that I and women was supposed to deal with by ourselves.

We need to stick together and educate each other to try and make the world safer for girls and women.

My heritage..hmm.

My mother ran away from the reservation at 11. She made it to Maine and worked as a nanny for kids that weren't too much older than her...she had to learn English. She spoke Mi'kmaq and French and learned English pretty quickly, she was a fast learner. My mother was smart, she was a seamstress and a knitter. (She only spoke Mi'kmaq to her sister on the phone, too.)

She didn't want us to present as Indian, she wanted us to be "American"...funny how culture sometimes skips a generation that way. My daughter is finding her identity, what being Native means to her...it's hard, because my mother never taught me what my culture was, I had to learn it myself, so she's struggling too. It's a personal journey.