BY VIC THASIAH
The beautiful, wondrous, life-giving public lands on the California Central Coast—that we had been running for years—generated a community called Runners for Public Lands (RPL) in 2019 dedicated to their protection. Soon after we wanted to expand and deepen our understanding of public lands, and clarify and explain why we were “for” them, especially given their origins in the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Thus began our five-year conversation with hundreds of runners across the country, where understanding them as an ecological, cultural, and recreational common good seemed to capture our collective experience.
Fast forward to 2024, RPL established a Public Lands Working Group, which included RPL’s executive director Kat Baker and board directors Tia Bodington, Alison Désir, Dustin Martin, Laura Alonzo-Ochoa, and Tim Tollefson; and members external to RPL: José González (Founder of Latino Outdoors and Equity Officer of East Bay Regional Park District in Oakland, California), Jeff Kuyper (Executive Director of Los Padres ForestWatch), and Andrew Pattison (Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Colgate University). I chaired the working group and Khrystyne Wilson (Assistant Professor of Religion at California Lutheran University) drafted the material that we shaped into an organizational statement and definitions (legal and everyday use).
The statement and definitions boldly reframe how we view, value, and interact with public lands. They offer a broader conception that encompasses all spaces open to the public, from federally managed National Parks to neighborhood parks, and everything in between. Public lands and public health are considered indivisible. And moving beyond the current legal frameworks, the statement and definitions prioritize access, belonging, solidarity, collaboration, and sustainability, recognizing the positive correlation between cultural diversity and biodiversity. They now serve as the basis of RPL’s programs, advocacy, and policy work.
“It’s important to connect around common understandings of what we value and what we mean,” said José González, Founder of Latino Outdoors. “Not because we have to have perfect definitions or be in full agreement but because there is power in connecting our mental models and shifting those as needed in service of the change we want. So ‘defining public lands’ for me is less about crafting a prescriptive denotation, and more about offering the space for connection, mutual accountability, and alignment for how and why we work together to care for the land.”
The seizure of what we call public lands from Indigenous peoples, however, continues to trouble us, calling for various forms of redress and restitution. Author David Treuer (Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota) sums up well a sentiment shared by many in our community: “there can be no better remedy for the theft of land than land.” Discerning what this means with Indigenous peoples—place by place, and community by community—across the country is our commitment. And, taking action to address these and any other problematic public lands policies that perpetuate inequalities is our priority.
Thrown into this world as we are, inheriting complex historical challenges and sometimes complicit in ongoing ones, there can be no such thing as once-and-for-all perspectives. The statement and definitions we’ve adopted are grounded in community conversations, and will continue to evolve through the same. As RPL empowers runners to protect public lands and expand access to nature, we do so together with gratitude, humility, and joy. With a mix of idealism and realism—driven by visions of conservation and equity, while believing that incremental progress is both meaningful and necessary. And in the way we run: with love, freedom, strength, endurance, and resolve.
— Vic Thasiah, Founder and Board President of Runners for Public Lands