Remaining Native

Welcome to Sonic Journeys, the podcast where we listen to films, and hear filmmakers from all over the world talk about how they shape meaning with audio. 

We’re kicking off the podcast by listening to Remaining Native. It won the 2025 Special Jury Award and Audience Award for documentary feature at SXSW. Remaining Native is a running film; it's a coming of age film; and it’s a film that showcases Indigenous resilience and resistance. It follows a Native American teenager from the Yarrington Payute reservation in Nevada who’s chasing his dream to become an elite college distance runner – all while honoring the memory of his great grandfather, who ran to escape an Indian boarding school.

Remaining Native’s director Paige Bethmann (Haudenosaunee) joins host Stina Hamlin in conversation about how she crafted the film’s sound. Paige uprooted her life in New York City and moved to Nevada for three years to make the documentary. She says: “The idea of tapping into ancestral muscle memory was the goal of this film.” 

Learn more about Remaining Native, see where it’s playing next, request a screening and more by going to www.remainingnativedocumentary.com or Instagram @remainingnative. The team would love to hear from you!

Sonic Journeys is presented by 4th World Media, a matriarch-led organization dedicated to media justice, narrative sovereignty and the holistic care of underserved filmmakers.

Host and Creator: Stina Thomas Hamlin

Supervising Producer: Jenny Asarnow

Executive Producer: Tracy Rector

Theme song: Tooh Nílíní by Kino Benally

Consulting Graphic Designer: Joel Schomberg

Cover art: Mer Young

Connect with us on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Sonic Journeys is an independent podcast. You can find it on Apple Podcasts and anywhere else you get podcasts.

Transcript

Remaining Native

Sonic Journeys 

Season 1 Episode 1

Release date: September 11, 2025

Stina Thomas Hamlin: I think we all could benefit from listening right now. Especially listening to the Earth, listening to the water, and definitely listening to each other.

[Soundscape plays]

Tracy Rector: Welcome to Sonic Journeys

[Music plays: Tooh Nílíní by Kino Benally]

Stina: Hey everyone, what’s up? My name is Stina Thomas Hamlin. I am a lover of soundscapes and the power and peacethat  I find when I’m engaging in deep listening.

I have been doing post production for films for over 20 years. Overseeing color correction and sound mixing, and things like that. And one time I was listening to a short film without watching the imagery. And it was so enjoyable. I had seen the film before,so I kind of knew what it was about, but now I was taking in the story with only the sonic texture and soundscape and it just hit me different. That story and that film came into my body. That’s really how this podcast was born - cause I really want to share these feelings with people - with you! 

So that’s what we’re going to do on Sonic Journeys. We’re going to experience cinematic sound together, and we’re also going to hear from filmmakers from all over the world about how they shape meaning with audio. 

Paige Bethmann: You know sound is 50% of a film. It’s so important. 

[ambient sounds play]

Stina: We are kicking off the podcast with a film I worked on with my friend and collaborator, Tracy Rector. Tracy and I met years ago on a panel we were on together talking about immersive storytelling, which is like virtual reality. And we bonded because we had serious matriarch vibes - we’re both mothers - but also because of our love of thinking outside of the box, in life and in our storytelling. And now, after all these years and so many projects together, we are starting a matriarch-led organization called 4th World Media, dedicated to narrative sovereignty. We’re super excited about it. 

And so today we’re actually listening to one of our films. It won this year’s Special Jury Award and the Audience Award for Documentary [Feature] at SXSW. And we are so proud of the journey that it’s on!

The name of the film is Remaining Native. It is about a Native American teenager named Ku. He’s from the Yarrington - Payute reservation. He’s a runner, and he’s chasing his dream of becoming an elite college athlete. But he’s also thinking of his great grandfather. Because when his great grandfather was eight years old, he ran too. He ran more than 50 miles to escape from an Indian boarding school  

[Remaining Native excerpt] Ku Stevens: I feel the heat around me. My breath with every step. And I imagine running for my life.

[gong plays over sound of breathing]

Stina: Remaining Native is  a running film, it's a coming of age film, and it’s a film that showcases Indigenous resilience, but also our resistance when it comes to trying to navigate our identities. It was created by my friend. 

Paige: [Speaks in Indigenous language] Hi, my name is Paige Beman. I am a Haudenosaunee filmmaker and the director of Remaining Native. 

Stina: So I was s honored that Paige joined me to talk about how she crafted the sound in this amazing film

Paige: The idea of tapping into ancestral muscle memory was the goal of this film. So, hen Ku runs on the land, that is the portal in which he's able to access this memory of his great-grandfather's story.  

Stina: We’re going to get into all of that. And stay tuned because after my conversation with Paige we’re going to listen to the first 15 minutes of Remaining Native - with no commentary. 

[Music plays] 

Stina: I’m usually behind the scenes so this was my first interview as a podcast host. And Remaining Native is Paige’s first film, but she’s also been working in media and TV for a long time, and she’s so skilled in her craft..  

Stina: Recording - what’s up! Okay. Hi Paige. 

Paige: Hey.

Stina: Hi. Um, I just wanna be myself. Don't be weird. How did this film come into your life? 

Paige: Yeah. The film came into my life in 2021. That was when the news was coming out of the 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children's remains that were discovered in Kamloops, Canada. And for me, when that news surfaced, there were so many reactions. You know, my great-grandmother attended a boarding school, and other community members had relatives who went to boarding schools. But I also saw a lot of reactions that knew nothing about Indian boarding schools, in Canada or in the United States. 

At that time, a friend of mine had shared an article with me about this 17-year-old runner in Nevada. And it was about his want and desire to retrace his great-grandfather’s 50 miles through the desert. And when I read that story, you know, I really just felt connected to this kid who was dealing with this history and these emotions and was really inspired by his want and desire to honor his family.

And so I ended up reaching out to his mother on Facebook because I didn't wanna be a creepy lady, DMing a 17-year-old kid. Um, but I shared, you know, my family story with her and asked if I could come out and film the run for the first time. And, you know, very graciously they welcomed me to do that. Um, and I ended up moving there from New York City to Reno, Nevada, where I lived for the last three and a half years.  

Stina: Yeah, it's so beautiful that you did that, and like now it just seems like you're just part of the family, right? And you can tell that, I mean, that, it's hard to put words to that, but you can feel that in the film. 

Paige: Yeah, it's been one of the most rewarding and challenging and healing moments of my life. 

[Sound from Remaining Native plays]

Paige: You know, a lot of the reasons why I moved out to Reno to live there all the time wasn't just to, you know, build trust and to be close with Ku’s family, but was also to pay respect and understand the land that I was filming on. Being able to use sound as a way to pay that respect and develop sort of the characterization of the land with, you know, how windy it is and just all of the textures and the sage brush and the heat, I think it really added another layer to the film. Because it's a very distinct place. And I felt like, yeah, I needed to do that justice. 

Stina: Sound makes the land into a character in this film from the start. The opening sequence is really sparse and spacious. And Paige and her team built quiet layers on top of each other. We hear crickets. 

Paige: Crickets. Oh my gosh, crickets are everywhere in this film. [Laughs]. And they annoyed the heck out of me in the edit. 

Stina: A bird cracks a traditional food called a pine nut. 

Paige: That’s not the natural sound of it.  We heard other audio of someone hitting two sticks together and it had the same sort of sound so we were like layering it in. 

Stina: We hear running footsteps, then narration. 

[Sound from Remaining Native] Ku: When I run, I think about my breathing.

Stina: Then this music. 

[Music from Remaining Native plays]

Paige: It took forever for us to get this beginning right. 

Stina: Yeah, so, cause that’s what I was going to say, the layers - there’s so many layers. And then that specific song. Can you share a little bit about that?

Paige: Yeah. You know, the music was probably - that took the longest getting this opening sequence right. We had been working with our composer, Kino Benally, who's a Diné musician, and he is so brilliant where our goal was to make the film feel like running and use a lot of things like percussion. And to also create like a layer that still sounds a little bit heavy or dark or like what we call like humidity in our score, which is like just this like sticky element that is sort of clinging onto us like that of generational trauma.

[Music from Remaining Native continues]

Paige: And so Kino really used instruments such as this elk caller that has this really kind of screechy, um, not pleasant sound. Um, but it has also a very primal and a very like, empowering element to it that I really was attracted to. 

[Elk caller from Remaining Native plays]

Paige: It gives you like chills. Like your shoulders go up towards your ears a little bit, and I think we wanted that. 

The score in general was something that we worked on up until the very last minute. And I remember listening to the film audio only – similar to what this podcast is – but just through what the music to make sure that the music was cohesive, that it really felt like an album. I didn't want anyone to know where the soundscape and the music began and ended.

[Music from Remaining Native continues]

Stina: Running is core of the film, connecting the protagonist Ku directly with his great grandfather. But the sound of running is not easy to record in the field. 

Paige: Because you're not only trying to keep up with a runner, but you're also trying to not get your own out of breath sounds coming out of you filming him, you're not trying to get the car that's chasing him. And so you really have to find a way to isolate breath. How we did this was we put Ku on our Peloton bike at home, and we rigged up a microphone to get isolated breath. So we had Ku on the bike. He would cycle at different paces and then we would have him stop and just breathe directly into the microphone.

And it looked ridiculous because it was a C-stand with a microphone, with a giant like fuzzy blanket draped over the front to absorb the sound outside. And having Ku do what does a jog sound like. What does a sprint sound like. What does a casual distance run sound like. That was really how we captured the breathing element. Ku always was like, this is harder than my regular workout. You know, because we kept asking him to do it over and over again.  

[Sound of Ku’s breathing from Remaining Native]

Stina: Those running sounds got layered into sequences where Ku is racing in track meets. 

[Sound of track meet from Remaining Native]

Paige: On the surface of watching it, you don't necessarily understand the level of the layers of the sound in the scene,

Stina: Paige’s sound designer asked her tons of questions as they designed those scenes. 

Paige: you know, when he like, does the somersault, do you want a sound under that, and like hear a little bit of the grass? And maybe you don't actually hear that in the recording. But even just adding like a little tickle of a grass sound or having the crowd noises be sparse or be full. You know, those are some of the decision making, um, elements that we had to talk through on how we wanted to amplify the energetic sports elements of the film or we actually wanted to restrain.

Stina: Here’s an important race near the end of the film. 

[Sound of track meet from Remaining Native continues]

Paige: It was sort of like a culmination of all of the sounds. It was the breathing, it's the rush of the sports element of the crowd, and really a heightened experience because this was like the biggest race of Ku’s career. 

And also being able to interweave the sounds of escaping, like going through brush, going through a river, going through the trees, and being able to pair all of those things together was really cool sonically.

And how do we balance the distance and the closeness of the sounds. Where do we want them to be - in the forefront or the background? I think that's always a really cool thing to explore and how you can manipulate that in editing to be able to point someone's thoughts in the right direction.

So it was like, oh, the race sounds kind of mute out, or they kind of become background and the escape of this 8-year-old kid becomes the foreground and then they flip flop. And so I thought that was really interesting.

[Sound of track meet from Remaining Native continues]

Stina: At key moments in Remaining Native, we hear sequences where Ku is talking about how his great-grandfather escaped the horrific boarding schools. These sequences have their own particular sound. 

[Excerpt from Remaining Native] Ku: I think about my great grandfather, Frank Quinn, being eight years old, running away over 50 miles from a boarding school.

Paige: If you looked at this sequence in Premiere, you would see like 20 layers of audio. Because it's like the music and it's Ku’s dialogue and it's sounds that we actually put on really low frequencies or the church singing is actually the Hallelujah song but in reverse because we wanted to make it very not comprehensible. 

[Sound from Remaining Native]

You couldn't make out the English. You know, it's trying to embody what an 8-year-old child who has never been in this space would feel, 

[Excerpt from Remaining Native] Ku: You're whittled down until you fail to recognize yourself.

Paige: It always leaves this lump in my throat feeling when I'm listening to this part. That was like the goal and the intention, was to find that balance between how to make something that is really deplorable and sad and scary without leaning too far into like the tropes or being too obvious. We wanted to leave space for the audience to develop their own feelings for themselves. 

At one point I was really more, okay, let's lean heavy sound design, sound design, sound design on like every image. And then when we were doing that, I felt like it was too like, I don't know, History Channel. I realized that musically it might be more powerful when it has these sort of repetitive long sustained notes. 

[Excerpt from Remaining Native] Ku: If you stay there, you're going to lose a part of you.

Stina: Ku’s voice carries these sequences. And the idea for them came from a conversation that Paige had with Ku, about trying to imagine what it must have felt like for his great grandfather to run away, way out in the desert, far from everything he knew, at eight years old. 

Paige: And he said to me, you know, when I am running out there, I just imagine being eight and I wanna say to everybody, imagine you're eight. And so when we were developing the edit along, I wanted to revisit that idea. I felt really stuck in where we were in the process of editing, I think it was like the rough cut or something. And so I was like, okay, let me go back to Ku and let's sit down and I just wanna ask you that. Can you walk me through what it would be like to be eight years old, being taken away from your family?

And Ku just took it from there. You know, I couldn't have scripted that. You know, he is just so poetic with his voice. He's so descriptive, he's so self-aware and yeah, he really like threw himself in that experience and trying to take on what it would be like to be in someone else's shoes, quite literally. And I think that was really what unlocked this whole film.

[Music from Remaining Native plays]

Stina: I love that. It's so beautiful. You know, like it goes deep, right? Like you, these are like, everything is like deeply thought and felt,  you know what I mean? So I just love that.

Paige: This is like fun for me 'cause I feel like it taps into the things I actually worked so long on that no one ever asks about.

Stina: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was like, it's so important. 

Paige: and nobody wants to know about it. 

Stina: I do. 

Paige: Yeah, you do. Thank you Stina. 

Stina: I really do.

Stina: It was awesome to talk to Paige and get inside her mind about what she was thinking during the mix of this film. And now it’s our chance to just listen. So get comfortable and grab your headphones.We’re going to listen to the first fifteen minutes of Remaining Native.  

[Remaining Native excerpt]

00:01:39:05 

Ku Stevens When I run, I think about my breathing. How my body feels, if I'm cold, if I'm hot, if I'm sweating. But on a deeper level, I imagine the road being replaced with sagebrush. In a valley that's untouched. I feel the heat around me. My breath with every step. And I imagine running for my life.

00:04:28:28

[ Chickens clucking ]

00:04:39:25

Misty Stevens Come on Mama. There you are. Let's see if the freeloaders gave us an egg. Whoo-hoo! One little measly egg. We're living large now, baby.

00:04:55:16

Delmar Stevens [ Singing in Nahuatl ]

00:05:10:21

Misty Stevens Come on, chicky, chicky, chicky.

00:05:12:20 

[ Alarm ringing ]

00:05:23:22

Ku Stevens

No. [ Groans, yawns ]

00:05:31:02

Misty Stevens

-Ku Stevens, get off your ass and get ready.

00:05:39:01

[ Garage door opening ]

00:05:58:25

[ Engine revving ]

00:06:06:01

[song “Chin Up High” ]

00:06:29:21

[ Whistle blows ]

00:06:32:15 - 00:06:36:01

[ Indistinct conversations ]

00:06:38:14

Kid, off camera text on screen

He did 8 miles?

00:06:41:19

Kid, off camera text on screen

What’s he running for?

00:06:51:23

Ku Stevens

Being the only cross-country runner for my high school, everyone's like, "Run, Forrest, run," or "Put some clothes on." But it motivates me.

00:07:08:21

[ Indistinct shouting ]

00:07:20:12

Race Announcer

Line it up. Who's ready to race?

00:07:22:02 

[ Cheers and applause ]

00:07:31:22 - 00:07:34:12

Race Announcer

-On your marks.

00:07:34:12

[ Starting gun fires ]

00:07:36:07 

[ Cheers and applause ]

00:07:41:25

Misty Stevens

-He’s doing good.

00:07:47:00

Race Announcer

And we'll be watching the clock. 16:47 is the course record. We're going to be really close.

00:07:52:10

[ Cheers and applause ]

00:08:13:26

Delmar Stevens

That's a huge distance.

00:08:17:06 

Misty Stevens

He's going to slaughter this.

00:08:21:18

Race Announcer text on screen

Please clear the track. 

00:08:23:18

Race Announcer text on screen

Ku Stevens coming in from Yerington.

00:08:33:10

Race Announcer text on screen

16:02 and the new course record. 

00:08:35:08

[ Cheers and applause ]

00:08:38:27

Whoo! Whoo-hoo!

00:08:41:10 

Whoo!

00:08:425:22

Misty Stevens

Oh that was amazing, look what you can do. 

00:08:48:07

Race-goer

That's a good cap right there, man.

00:08:50:09 

Ku Stevens

That was a hard ass course.

Delmar Stevens

Good job Ku

Misty Stevens

Oh so awesome

00:08:55:15

Misty Stevens text on screen

Run by the table and see if there is a medal or something.

00:09:02:11

Ku Stevens

My parents always told me, "Your legs are going to take you places." I was like sixth

or seventh grade. And I remember hearing that Oregon's, like, the number-one track program in the country.

00:09:12:25 

Ku Stevens

[ Grunts ]

00:09:15:13

Ku Stevens

This was like a really dark green when I got it. And I wore this hat every day for a long time. I've always wanted to be a Duck.

00:09:23:02 

Ku Stevens

People ask me, "Where are you going to go to college?" It's always been that. So next year it's Oregon or nothing.

00:09:43:15

Delmar Stevens

You know, when he was 10 years old, he started beating me. You know, it didn't

take him long to, like, put it on me too at a 5K, you know. And he was just fast.

00:09:52:21 

Delmar and Misty Stevens

[ laugh ]

00:09:55:01

Misty Stevens

You know, we're such a tiny town. He's, like, the only runner. So Delmar has to be his coach at events.

00:10:02:25

Delmar Stevens

We know where he wants to go, you know? University of Oregon.

00:10:08:21 

Misty Stevens

But he's not going to get anywhere if he keeps running here out in rural Nevada.

00:10:50:21

Ku Stevens

Running out here every day,it's a gift and a curse at the same time.

00:11:02:10

Ku Stevens

I get lost in my thoughts. The miles start to melt away. And I float along the trails. But out here, there's a history.

00:11:43:05 

Ku Stevens

I think about my great grandfather, Frank Quinn, being eight years old, running away over 50 miles from a boarding school.

00:12:14:17

Ku Stevens

Imagine you're eight. You're with your family. [speaking Paiute, laughter ] You know, living your life.

00:12:28:01

[ speaking Paiute ]

00:12:47:07 

Ku Stevens

And then maybe there's a few men. Maybe there's just one. Your mom and your dad are crying and begging for you to stay. But you can't. It's not up to you. You're being taken away.

00:13:23:18 

Ku Stevens

You eventually make it to a compound. You're tossed off the wagon,and you're given to people that are so desperate to teach the ways of their God.

00:13:44:05 

Ku Stevens

You may know a few English words, but that's not nearly enough for you to truly understand.

00:13:59:03 

Ku Stevens

They cut your hair off. They'll scrub your skin with chemicals.

00:14:12:10 

Ku Stevens

You're not allowed to speak your language.

00:14:23:28

Ku Stevens

You're whittled down until you fail to recognize yourself.

00:14:32:15 

Ku Stevens

Imagine being washed away.

00:14:44:27 

Ku Stevens

If you stay there, you're going to lose a part of you.

00:14:57:07

Ku Stevens

My great-grandfather decided to run.

00:15:13:01 

Ku Stevens (young)

-Hey, Mom. As you see in the last videos and pictures, I've spotted a deer. I got wetone by trying to go jump over a river to get another good picture of the deer, and I still am.

00:15:29:20 

Ku Stevens (archival clip)

He's right behind the bush back there.

[Remaining Native excerpt ends]

[Music plays]

Stina: Remaining Native is screening all over the place: Rio de Janeiro, Camden Maine, Vancouver BC, Buffalo NY, and lots more. Find a link to to upcoming screenings in our show notes. 

Remaining Native is Directed by Paige Bethmann and Produced by Jessica Epstein.  One of the Executive Producers is our very own, Tracy Rector.Production Sound by Zack Kiszka. Sound Design by Tom Paul. Music by Kino Benally. Supervising Sound Editor & Additional Re-Recording Mixer Coll Anderson. Sound Effects Editors are Mark Flip and Michael Odmark. Dialogue Editor Duncan Clark. And Coordinating Producer for Som Vivo, Camille Laser Boswell.

This podcast is Sonic Journeys. It’s produced by 4th World Media. We are a matriarch led organization dedicated to media justice, narrative sovereignty and the holistic care of underserved storytellers. 

Say hi on Instagram or - if you’re wearing your business casual today - find us on LinkedIn. We’re always @ 4thWorldMedia

And we’re  brand new –  so if you could give us 5 stars and a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify that would be amazing! 

Our supervising producer is Jenny Asarnow. Our Executive Producer is Tracy Rector.

Our Theme song is Tooh Nílíní, by Kino Benally. Consulting Graphic Designer, Joel Schomberg. Cover art by Mer Young. Sonic Journeys is created and hosted by me. I’m Stina Thomas Hamlin. Thanks for listening.

[Music ends]