Published on TheRinger.com, July 23, 2021
https://www.theringer.com/sports/2021/7/23/22587803/rosalie-fish-track-indigenous-women-washington
Chosen as one of the 2022 The Year’s Sports Writing, re-printed in the annual book: https://www.amazon.com/Years-Best-Sports-Writing-2022/dp/1637270909/ref=asc_df_1637270909/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=598272706309&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5924708075231016239&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9030945&hvtargid=pla-1661705702045&psc=1
Before every race, Rosalie Fish stares at her reflection in the mirror. She pauses a few minutes and thinks of Indigenous women. Women who have gone missing, who have been murdered. Those whose names she knows, those whose names she’ll never know.
Aunts, cousins, neighbors, classmates. Women who had families, who had ambitions. Who had children, friends, dreams, desires.
She paints a giant red hand across her mouth, stretching across her cheeks. Red is the color that spirits, that ancestors, can see, according to some Native traditions. The hand over her mouth is meant to represent and honor the Indigenous women who have been silenced through violence—sexual violence, physical violence, psychological violence—an epidemic that receives little national attention.
“I had always known I was a target,” Fish says. (READ FULL STORY HERE).
Mirin Fader 