Teen's 'Remembrance Run' from tribal school stirs emotions

YERINGTON, Nev. (AP) — The significance of his “Remembrance Run” didn’t sink in until Ku Stevens was finishing up the two-day, 50-mile (80-kilometer) trek across the high desert from Carson City to Yerington to honor the memories of ancestors who were removed from their families and sent to the Stewart Indian School.

The school that operated on the south edge of Carson City from 1890 to 1980. It was one of about 350 across the U.S. and Canada created to force the assimilation of Native Americans, one of

The Yerington High school senior's great-grandfather, Frank “Togo” Quinn, escaped from the school three times — the first when he was 8 years old than a century ago.

“Running down that hill and seeing my valley and seeing my home and my people’s land out here, goosebumps all the way down,” Stevens told the Reno Gazette Journal after he finished the run on Aug. 15.

His father, Delmar, told the Las Vegas Sun he first started thinking about a decade ago about a way to help connect his son to his heritage.

Ku Stevens says his run was a lot easier than when his great-grandfather made his first escape in 1913. For one thing, he said, “They didn’t have Gatorade.”