Running with Purpose: Incongruity and Harmony in the Busy Life of Jordan Marie Whetstone
Ferocity and joy; fury and compassion; laser-focus and panoramic vision; the ability to listen and speak not only from the head, but from the heart and gut – Jordan Marie Whetstone embodies all of these seemingly contradictory impulses, often in the same breath, the same thought, the same sentence. You will find this intersection of almost-oppositional emotional/intellectual forces in her running, in the films she produces, you will find it in her athlete advocacy work, her outreach efforts for the awareness of the criminally underpublicized epidemic of murdered and missing Indigenous women, all of which have found a home under the umbrella of Rising Hearts, the organization founded by Whetstone to promote racial, social, climate and economic justice.
Several of these harmonious, contradictory elements are present in her voice the first time we speak on the phone about her latest collaboration for Rising Hearts. I was sure I could detect a slightly dissonant harmony of tense crackle and inviting melody, but then again, it might have been the cold.
With only a week to go before the New York City Marathon, where she is both running and launching a new project, an illness has swept through her new and growing family. She had spent much of the previous day at the doctor with her three young children, and is now beginning to feel ill herself. Still, she sounds excited, delighted even, at the prospect of running a marathon, while introducing, on the running world’s biggest stage, the work of she and a crew of like-minded collaborators.
“I’m just glad this didn’t happen next week,” she says with a ‘whew, dodged a bullet’ lilt, “I should be fine by next Sunday.”
Sunday, of course is the New York City Marathon, a race that could justifiably be called ‘the world’s marathon,’ with over 56,000 participants hailing from some 150 nations, all joining their respective communities to the one big, joyous ambulatory community weaving its way through the five boroughs of the Big Apple. And nobody is more about community than Whetstone, who has building ever more intersected communities ever since she was a young girl in South Dakota learning the histories of her Indigenous relatives from her grandfather, who also introduced her to running. “My superhero,” she calls him.
With his voice in her heart, she widened her circle of relatives to include and elevate the voices of Indigenous, Black, Brown, Asian, Muslim, Jewish, Immigrant, Two Spirits, LGBTQ+, & Non-Binary relatives. “Through Rising Hearts,” Whetstone says, “we want to foster care, love and kindness for everyone, whether or not they are on the path. I’d love to see all runners be a part of this community.”
Which is why she finds herself in New York City on race day, joining some like-minded friends. Showing up to run the marathon and celebrate the collaboration, are artist, activist and ultrarunner, Yatika Starr Fields, and Kali Reis, World Champion boxer, acclaimed actor and leading voice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous women. Fields, in collaboration with rabbit, and at Whetstone’s bequest, designed a singlet that, in his singular, narrative style, encapsulates Rising Heart’s mission of elevation, celebration and inclusion. Using as a launching point his collage gracing the packaging of GU’s raspberry lemonade gels, Fields created a singlet that dazzles, its abstracted shapes hearkening back to both the GU box and Fields’ own large-scale mural works celebrating Indigenous lives.
Whetstone and Fields both have close ties to rabbit, with Fields having been featured in a 2023 Dream Chasers profile, and Whetstone being a former rabbitPRO athlete. Whetstone also produced a short film documenting Field’s race at Western States Endurance Run in 2022, the GU box he designed for the race and Rising Hearts, and the race’s inaugural public acknowledgement of the tribes whose lands the race traversed. With these ties to the company and to one another, and with rabbit’s support of the Running on Native Lands Initiative, it was a no-brainer for Whetstone to approach the company about a collaboration between Rising Hearts, Fields and rabbit. And thus, a singlet was born.
Says Whetstone, “I wish more brands were open to collaboration in the way rabbit has been. For them to bring these special pieces to life goes a long way for representation.”
To Whetstone, the sincerity of rabbit’s commitment shows the evolution at least some companies have made in terms of representation and acknowledgment. The days when a box-ticking nod towards inclusion was as far as companies were willing to go in the direction of DEI are not that long gone.
“I’ve been tokenized,” says Whetstone, “and it was not a good experience.”
And it’s an experience she will no longer tolerate. The steel in her voice makes that abundantly clear. But a few seconds later she is waxing poetic about Fields’ art or the young athletes for whom she advocates, which brings us back to the warring narratives uneasily cohabiting just beneath her features and wrestling for control at the edges of her voice. On one hand, there is an ugly history of colonialism, racism, oppression and a genuine attempt at genocide, a history that has touched Whetstone’s own life more than once. On the other hand, there are famous races acknowledging their debt, and astonishing Indigenous art on high-tech activewear. On one hand, opportunity still comes slower to Native citizens. On the other, athlete/artists like Kali Reis and Yatika Starr Fields have made themselves into signposts showing a way forward. On one hand is the scourge of dead and disappeared Indigenous women. On the other hand, there are women dedicated to building communities of refuge and support. On one hand there’s a house full of sick kids, on the other a pack of cheering kids and an army of runners taking big bites from the Big Apple, more of them black and brown and female and queer with each passing year. Jordan Whetstone’s voice is all their voices; hers is the voice of the relatives that were and the relatives to be. It’s a ventriloquism born of great suffering and great joy, and if Jordan Marie Whetstone has anything to say about it, this story might yet have a happy ending.
And what of her own New York City Marathon experience? “The race,” she says, “went as well as I could have hoped for and more! It was a challenge to get to the start line having just had my twins 9 months prior. The training process went better than expected, though, and I really leaned into honoring my body and its needs this time around!”
“The whole NYC Marathon experience was exciting! We had a few community gatherings. I spoke on the NYRR Team for Climate Panel, helping to introduce and promote the first ever Team for Climate and NYRR's commitments. The crowds were amazing - living giving in those hard moments.”
And the race itself?
“My legs carried me through,” Whetstone says, “with a fairly consistent run the whole way, running with a deeper purpose and intention for missing and murdered Indigenous women and relatives, while fundraising for our You Are Loved initiative. Our Rising Hearts runners all performed beautifully! After the finish, I couldn't help but feel grateful and super excited to get back into launching our exciting collaboration with Yatika and rabbit!”
“It’s so gratifying,” Whetstone told me, “When people and brands are open to collaboration, providing a space for runners to be unapologetically themselves, to be safe, to be a good relative.”
