Native Women Run: Verna Volker,Jessica Louis, Amber Henderson, Angel Tadytin, and Birdie Wermy
Native people, including women, have been running over these lands since long before anyone organized a major marathon. Yet all too often, with notable exceptions like past guest Patti Catalano Dillon, they aren’t represented at modern races.
Group photo at the Chicago marathon expo
Changing that is the key goal of Native Women Run, an organization that Verna Volker launched in 2018. At first, it was an Instagram page; now, it’s a non-profit that creates space for and elevates the stories of Native women who run.
“Running is our healing; we’re healing from the historical generational trauma to our own trauma. Running is our medicine, and it heals us,” Verna told me and Cherie Louise Turner, host of the podcast Women’s Running Stories, the day before the 2024 Bank of America Chicago Marathon. “And running is our prayer. We say our prayers.”
Verna ran the Chicago Marathon herself in 2015. While there, she connected with Mary Beth Johnson, who handles community engagement and social impact for the race. The relationship deepened, and when Verna started Native Women Run, she knew she wanted to bring even more native runners to the event.
This year, the NWR team for Chicago numbered four: Jessica Louis, Amber Henderson, Angel Tadytin, and Birdie Wermy. All of them joined Verna, Cherie, and me onstage for a special live podcast recording at the race expo. (And, as you’ll hear in the intro to the recording, all of them finished the race the next day.)
It was Amber’s first marathon—something that, for years, she told her husband she’d never do. But when she heard the call from NWR, she couldn’t turn down the chance to do so in support of a cause she held so dear.
She runs, in part, to honor her ancestors before her (she was wearing her grandmother’s ring) and inspire her daughters after her. But she admits to a small bit of spite too, toward the doctor who told her dismissively, when she was struggling to get back into working out after having her third child, “Well, it’s not like you’re going to be running a marathon anytime soon.”
That cemented her resolve to do so in her 40th year (she turned 41 in the days after the race). “I always like positive vibes, but you know what, sometimes it takes somebody to say something like that—and I’m gonna just do it to prove them wrong,” Amber said.
Meanwhile, Chicago was the third marathon for Angel Tadytin, who’s on the leadership team for NWR. She’d already run Boston and New York with the organization. “The Navajo people have a deep-rooted history with running because it's part of our traditional ceremonies—for example, when I became a woman, I had to wake up and run,” she said. “It’s so cool that the teachings from my grandma, my great grandma, all of them, are what helps me finish a marathon today.” She never envisioned herself as a marathoner, but thanks to that history and Verna’s vision and action, she’s now halfway done with the Majors.
Jessica, meanwhile, had done one marathon before. During lonely miles in her rural New Mexico town, with only stray dogs to keep her company, she put in hours and hours of training on her own. “I come from a really small community and I’m in this big city. It’s amazing what we can do—no matter where we come from, no matter how small, we can still reach a lot,” she said.
And when she showed up in Chicago and met her Native teammates, she felt an immediate sisterhood. “As a runner, we are connecting to each other through our lands and also our bodies, our mind, our mental strength, our inner strength, our physical strength,” she said. “Now that we are meeting together for the first time, we're going to take these stories and we're going tell them over and over to our family. And they're going to say, ‘Oh, my mom ran that, my aunt ran that. We’re going to relate to each other through stories and because we always find a relation somewhere.”
Birdie is also an experienced marathoner—she’d done five 26.2-mile races before—and Chicago was on her bucket list. “The inspiration that I have behind running is not only leading by example, but also changing the next seven generations and our culture,” she said. “My grandpa used to always say, ‘You leave something better than the way you found it.’” She hopes being a runner, and a sober one at that, charts a path for her children and other young people in her community to follow.
Each runner knew she’d face challenges during the race, but they’d prepared well for them. Angel, for example, always includes a difficult adventure in each training cycle. Usually, it’s the Grand Canyon. “If you go down, you have to come back out, right?” she said. “Every time I do something that's going to be hard in my life, I take it on the dirt trails of my people, my ancestors.”
She brings along the spirit of her grandmother, a sheepherder who probably walked two marathons a day, and gains confidence from knowing that together, they can stay strong enough to emerge from any hardship.
Amber also said she’d remember her grandmother and her children, and Jessica, for her part, created a playlist to remind her of her family. Meanwhile, Birdie uses mantras to get herself through: “I’m a bad mother runner,” she tells herself. “This will be number six.” And finally: “I’ve already done this, what could be worse?”
Verna, meanwhile, tracked all the runners and cheered them on throughout the weekend. At this point, she’s led more than 50 teams of hundreds of Native women, creating a new level of visibility for the wider community. And while the work honors their ancestors, the impact on the next generation can’t be overstated.
At the Twin Cities Marathon the weekend prior to Chicago, Verna’s 12-year-old daughter saw another Native little girl staring at them. “My daughter looked at me, and said, ‘Mom, she sees us!’” Verna said. “But I said to myself, ‘She sees herself, in this space.’ That’s such a moving thing.”
“I hope that all these little Native girls will see themselves in these stories because they want to be in this space as well, and I want to see them here.”
About the author: Cindy Kuzma is a freelance writer, author, and podcaster based in Chicago, and part of the leadership team for Starting Line 1928. She contributes regularly to Runner’s World, The New York Times, SELF, and more; is co-author of Breakthrough Women’s Running: Dream Big and Train Smart and Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries; and co-host of The Injured Athletes Club podcast.
