Running Brave

The film tells the story of Billy Mills. Mills is of the Oglala Lakota people. He grew up on the Pine Ridge reservation. That is where he started running. He went to university on a scholarship. There he ran and there he met exclusion. Being caught between two worlds was not easy. His name counted for little in the races. Then came the Tokyo Olympics of 1964. Nobody had reckoned with him in the ten thousand metres. Mills won it by going ahead on the last lap. The time set an Olympic record. Robby Benson and Pat Hingle take the leads, with Graham Greene and Tantoo Cardinal also in the cast, in Donald Shebib’s Canadian film of 1983.