At this year’s SXSW, Remaining Native emerged as a powerful documentary that intertwines personal ambition with historical legacy, a film that dares to ask what it means to run—not just toward a finish line, but toward a future shaped by the past. Directed by Paige Bethmann, a filmmaker of Haudenosaunee (Mohawk/Oneida) descent, this absorbing portrait follows Ku Stevens, a 17-year-old from Nevada’s Yerington Paiute reservation. Ku is a high school runner with no coach, a teenager pounding the dirt roads alone, his sights set on a scholarship to the University of Oregon. But his story isn’t just about athletic grit; it’s about the ghost of his great-grandfather, who, at age 8, ran 50 miles across the desert to escape an Indian boarding school. In Bethmann’s hands, Remaining Native becomes a meditation on resilience, identity, and the long shadow of history—a documentary that’s as visceral as it is thoughtful.
Ku Stevens is a figure both ordinary and extraordinary. He’s a kid from a place where resources are scarce, where the nearest track is a dream and the nearest rival is himself. Bethmann’s camera lingers on him in moments of solitude—tying his shoes, cutting through the chill of a desert morning, his breath a faint plume against the vastness. There’s a purity to his determination, a quiet fire that burns through the isolation. Yet what elevates his journey beyond the familiar arc of the underdog is the weight of his heritage. His great-grandfather’s escape—a desperate, defiant sprint from a system bent on erasing Native culture—haunts the film like a specter. Ku doesn’t just run for himself; he runs for that 8-year-old boy, for the ancestors who survived, and for a community still fighting to be seen. It’s a legacy that could crush a lesser spirit, but Ku carries it with a grace that’s almost startling.
Bethmann doesn’t flinch from the history that underpins this tale. The Indian boarding schools, with their chilling mandate to “civilize” Native children, are a wound that hasn’t fully healed, a chapter of American shame that reverberates through generations. Drawing from her own family’s encounters with these institutions, Bethmann layers the film with archival footage and elder interviews, grounding Ku’s story in a context that’s both specific and universal. The past isn’t a backdrop here; it’s a living presence, woven into every stride Ku takes. When he talks about his great-grandfather, there’s a reverence in his voice, a recognition that this isn’t just family lore—it’s a call to action. Remaining Native makes you feel that duality: the heaviness of memory and the urgency of moving forward.
What sets the film apart is Bethmann’s knack for marrying the intimate with the expansive. The documentary is absorbing not because it shouts, but because it listens—to Ku’s doubts, to his family’s pride, to the silence of the Nevada landscape. The cinematography is a revelation: wide shots of sagebrush and sunrise, Ku a lone silhouette against the horizon, the desert stretching out like a canvas of possibility and pain. These aren’t just pretty pictures; they’re a visual metaphor for the journey, for the freedom Ku chases and the history he can’t outrun. Bethmann paces the film like a long-distance race—steady, deliberate, building to a climax that’s less about triumph than transcendence. When Ku attempts his collegiate qualifying time, you’re not just watching a race; you’re watching a reckoning.
For all its historical heft, Remaining Native is refreshingly free of the sanctimony that often bogs down documentaries about marginalized lives. Ku isn’t a symbol of suffering; he’s a young man with agency, a runner who knows the finish line is only part of the story. Bethmann sidesteps the tired tropes of the sports-doc genre—no swelling music cues or cheap inspirational montages here—and instead roots Ku’s ambition in something deeper: a cultural narrative of survival and strength. This is a film that trusts its subject and its audience, letting the story breathe rather than forcing it into a mold.
That’s not to say it’s flawless. At times, the documentary’s focus on historical parallels threatens to overwhelm Ku’s present-day struggle, slowing the pace to a meditative crawl. You can feel Bethmann wrestling with the balance, her personal stake in the material occasionally tipping the scales. But these are quibbles in a work so assured, so authentic. Her Haudenosaunee perspective isn’t just a credential—it’s a lens that sharpens the film’s clarity, giving it a voice that feels lived-in, not borrowed.
In a crowded field of SXSW offerings, Remaining Native stands out not for its flash, but for its depth. It’s a film that lingers, like the ache after a long run, reminding us that history isn’t something we escape—it’s something we carry, a rhythm in our bones. Ku Stevens runs with that truth, his every step a bridge between past and future, between the boy who fled and the boy who dreams. Bethmann has crafted something rare here: a documentary that’s both a personal portrait and a cultural clarion call, a story of Indigenous youth that doesn’t just demand to be heard, but to be felt. In an era where representation can feel like a buzzword, Remaining Native is the real deal—a quiet triumph that cuts through the noise and leaves its mark.
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