Olympic champion talks to local students

Havre High School hosted a presentation Tuesday by one of the most famous Native American athletes of all time, winner of the 10,000 meter dash at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and the only American to win gold in the event to this day.

Billy Mills gave inspirational talks at Rocky Boy High School and Stone Child College Monday, then at Havre High Tuesday before heading to Box Elder High School.

Mills made it to the NCAA All-American Cross country team three times and was a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps, but before that he was raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, one of the poorest areas in the U.S.

His mother died when he was 8 and his father died when he was 12, and these losses were where he began Tuesday's talk.

He said when his mother died his father told him something he didn't fully understand at the time, but something that would guide his life, and help him heal.

"'Son, you have broken wings,' Mills said, recalling what his father told him. "'You cannot fly but I will share something with you, and if you follow it someday you will have the wings of an eagle. ... Find your dream son, and pursue it. It is the pursuit of a dream that heals broken souls.'"

He said his father told him to take the culture, traditions and spirituality of his people and extract from them the virtues and values that empower them, and let those guide him to his destiny.

He said his father told him to use those values and virtues to find common ground with others from cultures and societies from around the U.S. and the world, and through that common ground learn about and understand their differences.

Mills said he didn't fully understand his father's words, words his father would say to him again before being taken to the hospital to treat the stroke that would end his life.

"'Follow the dream,' the last words I heard my dad say," he told the filled auditorium.

But, he said, even as he tried to do as his father told him he encountered a world that wasn't willing to find common ground with him, one that wasn't yet open to understanding.

He said the first time he made All-American he could tell that his parents were proud of him, but then when he and his teammates, all international students, were poised to have their picture taken, he was told to get out of the picture, which hurt him, but his teammates wouldn't have it.

"I broke," Mills said. "Then a Canadian said 'Billy is the only American making All-American, the four of us are foreign athletes, I'm not going to have my picture taken unless he can get his photo taken. Billy, come stand by me.'"

He said this was his first introduction to one of the greatest lessons and challenges he ended up taking from sports, global unity.

He said he's traveled to 110 countries in his life, whether for sports or otherwise, and everywhere he goes, despite all the different cultures and languages and spiritualities, that there is a desire for global unity.

Mills said he felt this strongly when he was in Japan and learned about their culture and people, and the desire, especially among those growing up in the shadow of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for global unity.

But even after his encouraging encounter with the Canadian athlete who stood in solidarity with him, prejudice still remained a part of life, and when he made All-American again, he was told, again, to step out of the picture.

The same thing happened the third time as well.

He said he wanted to get away from it all and in his hotel room that night he looked at the open window and considered jumping.

Mills said he didn't want to die, but he was so desperate to get away from everything that he was considering it, but he was pulled back from the edge.

"I didn't want to kill myself," he said. "I just wanted to go where it was quiet. I'll tell you why I didn't jump, I could hear it in my ears, feel it under my skin, movement, energy, it sounded like an unspoken word, that movement, that energy, that unspoken word, sounded like my dad's voice, 'don't, don't, don't.' Like an echo, 'don't.'"

For years, he said, he felt ashamed of this moment and hasn't always felt like he could share that story until many societies in America really started to grapple with suicide, and he realized he wasn't alone in his struggles.

When he went to the Olympics and felt that sense of global unity, Mills said, he felt a sense of direction like he never had before.

"The games began to have an incredible purpose for me," he said. "I felt that I belonged."

He described the race itself, taking the lead, faltering, doubting himself, then looking at all his fellow runners, men he admired, tired just like him, then seeing his wife, Patricia, in the stands and remembering their shared dream.

He said he looked at the jersey of one of the people running and saw the image of an eagle, and was reminded of what his father had told him nine years before.

In those last 120 meters, he said, he found the strength to give it everything he had. In those moments he accepted that win or lose, his journey toward this goal had healed him.

"I'd healed a broken soul," Mills said. " ... I thought 'I may win, but I may not get to the finish line first, but I'm going to try.' I thought 'one more try, one more try, wings of an eagle, one more try!' and I felt the tape break."

He said he went back to find the runner with the image of an eagle on his jersey only to find that there was no such thing, it was just a trick of his own mind, and that was how he learned about the power of perception, how it can empower or destroy.

He said when he was standing to accept his medal before the eyes of the world he heard the National Anthem play and even though he loved the U.S., his home, he couldn't help but think of people like him who were still excluded from so much.

He said he felt pride representing America, but still didn't feel he belonged, until the man who put the medal around his neck said he'd never seen an American perform so well under pressure.

Mills said he learned a lot from sports, that it's the journey to achievement, not necessarily the achievement itself that defines greatness, and that it's not just ability and talent that allowed him to do what he did, but the choices he made on a day to day basis.

But through all of it, one lesson stood out in his speech, that for people to flourish, they need to cooperate, and to do that they need to understand each other across cultures and unite, unity through diversity, which he said is the foundation of America, a vast country made up of many different societies.

"I truly felt as if I had wings on my feet," he said. "I'm told the moment was electrifying and that people had just witnessed the greatest upset in Olympic history unfold, however, that is not what I took from sport."

He said through "the dignity, character and beauty of global diversity," sports can teach lessons that will help people come together and find solidarity and unity, but so can music, literature and any number of disciplines, and that is what he wants people to understand.

Mills told the story of Jesse Owens and Luz Long and the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, an event Adolf Hitler intended to use as evidence of so-called "Aryan superiority" in propaganda.

There, American Jesse Owens defeated German Athlete Luz Long in the long jump and dominated the games overall with four gold medals.

But Long's defeat wasn't the pivotal part of the story, it was the fact that Long, despite the politics of his country, which were already steeped in racism and xenophobia, congratulated Owens personally and treated him with respect and admiration, with the pair becoming lifelong friends, much to the ire of Hitler and many of his countryman.

Mills said the story of their friendship is a reminder of the power of sports to bring people together, and of common humanity that crosses country, culture and race, and remains a lesson for people today.

He asked the students to do what his father told him to do long ago, to extract the values and virtues from their culture, traditions and spiritualities and let them be a guide, because America needs all of them, all their cultures, to remain a democracy, one that can still improve and reach new heights.

Mills said his people, the Lakota, have a concept in their culture, a way of differentiating truth from honesty.

He said honesty is expressing one's truly held feelings, but those feelings are not always reflective of the truth.

He said he believes that America cannot be destroyed from without, only from within, but he believes honestly and truth in the young people of the U.S., like those in that room.

"I believe in the youth of America, I believe in unity through diversity, in this incredible country, and I believe, honestly and truly, that you young people will become major players in choreographing the future of America."

Mills said he also wanted to talk briefly to the young women in the audience about their importance to the country, and the world.

In his travels, he said, he found that women around the world look to the women of America for hope and direction, that their successes inspire women in countries on the other side of the world.

In an interview after the speech Mills elaborated on his message about diversity and unity, saying even after the games the U.S. was still largely closed off to the ideas of other cultures and societies.

He said even in the modern day there is so much division that needs to be addressed, and the U.S. just isn't in the place that it should be, and is at risk of getting worse.

Mills said many countries around the world are looking at systemic inequality within their societies and the generation-spanning effects of oppression past and present but the U.S. seems to be lagging behind when it should be tackling these issues head on.

"They're asking, 'Why isn't America taking the lead on this?'" he said.

He said he feels the U.S. is at something of a crossroads, that it is frustratingly close to evolving into a more mature, more introspective and just democracy, but at the same time is at risk of backsliding into something darker and more autocratic, where many believe that their freedom can come only at the expense of taking away the freedom of others.

Mills said the U.S. is not alone and it seems many other countries are at that same point, but he wants people to know that confronting the truth of their country's past is not something that needs to be so painful.

"Sometimes the truth, the footprints laid on mother earth, are painful, but the truth is also what heals, the truth shouldn't divide," he said.

He said an example of this is the recent statements made by Pope Francis in Canada about the residential school system, where Native Americans and First Nation people were subjected to horrific treatment at the hands of the system.

In the past few years mass unmarked graves of hundreds of Indigenous children have been found at the sites of former residential schools in Canada, some of which were run by the Roman Catholic Church.

The system was part of a century-long campaign of forced assimilation which the Historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded was cultural genocide.

Mills said Francis acknowledging the fact that this system was indeed a genocide isn't something that should cause pain, but something that should pave the way toward seriously grappling with the issues of today.

As someone who is half white and half Native American, Mills said, he's experienced both generational privilege and generational trauma, a bit of both worlds, and he believes there are patriots from both of those worlds who can unite and work toward a brighter future for their country.

"Maybe I'm naive, but I believe," he said.