Brandon Dugi is a competitive ultra runner who grew up in LeChee, Arizona, a small community in the Navajo nation. He runs several miles a day and competes in ultra races around the southwest. By becoming part of this larger running community, Brandon has made meaningful connections with other athletes and brands with the goal to celebrate and share the story of his Diné roots.
Brandon Dugi is a competitive ultra runner who grew up in LeChee, Arizona, a small community in the Navajo nation. He runs several miles a day and competes in ultra races around the southwest. By becoming part of this larger running community, Brandon has made meaningful connections with other athletes and brands with the goal to celebrate and share the story of his Diné roots.
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Brandon Dugi:
You can run competitively and try to beat someone, try to win a race. But there's more to that than just trying to be the fastest person ever. And to me, I feel like that's where it really hits people that, "Okay, this running thing is not just about competing, it's more about finding who you are and what it will do to you and what it can do to you."
Shelby Stanger:
Brandon Dugi is a competitive ultra runner who grew up in LeChee, Arizona, a small community in the Navajo nation. He runs several miles a day and competes in ultra races around the southwest. By becoming part of this larger running community, Brandon has made meaningful connections with other athletes and brands. Last year, HOKA released a video featuring Brandon where he talks about his relationship with running and how it ties back to his Dine roots.
Brandon also spends his time shooting photos of the stunning desert landscape, raising money for clean water in his community and coaching his local cross country team. He even did this interview at the high school where he mentors young runners.
I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living an REI Co-op Studio's production.
Brandon Dugi, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Brandon Dugi:
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited.
Shelby Stanger:
We're excited to have you on. Where are you right now?
Brandon Dugi:
Right now, I'm in Page, Arizona at the Page High School.
Shelby Stanger:
Is that where you coach cross country?
Brandon Dugi:
Yeah. Yeah. I was born and raised here in the Page area. Sorry, that's the bell.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, that's the bell. That's awesome.
Brandon Dugi:
Kids are, kids are-
Shelby Stanger:
First period. First period's over. Got it. Okay. First I want to ask you, how did you discover running?
Brandon Dugi:
Running has always been a thing. Being Navajo, growing up on the reservation, my grandmother, she always told us to wake up early morning and either start your morning off of course with a prayer and then getting out the door and being active. Whether that's going on a morning walk, whether that's going on a run and doing that at a certain time of the day, again in the morning is crucial to us Dine people. It's the time of when the creator is out before the sun is rising and that's when you know you want the creator to hear you. They hear your prayers, they hear your breath, they hear you getting after and you not being lazy. It's just a special time. It's hard to explain, but you try to always be up when the sun is rising or doing some sort of physical activity or prayer within that time range.
And yeah, it started off with that and then seeing the community of the Dine people. Basketball was one thing, but running was another. Hearing all these great runners come from different areas of the Navajo reservation was just something that to me was like, "Okay, it's something that I need to do more because it's part of who we are as Dine people."
And yeah, and then getting into high school, our high school cross country program when I was in high school was legit. We had a lot of really good kids that did amazing things and we're state champions and still to this day are state champions, so.
Shelby Stanger:
And Page High School, is it mostly kids from Navajo, or?
Brandon Dugi:
Yeah, I would say maybe 80, 85% of the kids are Navajo in the school. But it's interesting though, a lot of them don't live in Page. A lot of them have to get on the bus. Some of them have to wake up at four in the morning, get ready for school, get on the bus at five, and then it's about, some of them have a 30 minute to an hour bus drive to get to school, so.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. So can we step back a little bit? I don't know a lot about Navajo Nation. I'd love for you to tell me what it was like to grow up there.
Brandon Dugi:
Yeah, growing up on the reservation, it was really interesting. From my standpoint, not knowing what else is out there, of course it was really normal to me. And now looking at it now it's tough. Even to this day, there's people that still live the way they used to live back then with no running water and electricity in some areas. I grew up actually living, I would say three to four miles away from Page seeing the, I guess you can say city life where things are a bit easier with running water and electricity, going five to 10 miles down the road and you're at a Walmart. And on the weekends, we would go and spend time out where my dad was from because where my dad is from, from his house to the main highway, it was like 20 miles and there's no running water, no electricity out there. So it's really, could be lonely sometimes, but it is humbling. It is fun to be out there.
Shelby Stanger:
Would even your grandma run?
Brandon Dugi:
I don't think she ran because when I really got to know them a lot, they were a lot older. I'm sure they did run back in their younger days, but even then it was like I was saying, getting up to greet the creator is not just getting up and going out and going on a run. You don't have to run. Anybody could do this. You can get up, start your morning off with a prayer, speak to the creator, give them your offering and go on a walk, do stuff around the house, outside the house. Just being active, that's what it really is, and she was always like that. Summers I would go out and stay with her.
I'll never forget this, there's, I'm sleeping. It's like 20 degrees outside and four in the morning. Sun's not even out yet. She's opening the door, sun comes out for another hour, she opens the door and she leaves it open and it's cold. Breeze is just coming in and I can see her outside the door and she's praying and she's sitting outside and she's looking to the east and she's praying in Navajo. And I'm sitting there and at the time I'm like, "Ugh, close the door, it's cold."
But just seeing her do that every single day, every morning was something special and something I've never seen anybody do. And the prayers she would do would be like for an hour to two hours, kid you not. And she would pray for everything and she would give thanks for everything. The plants, the bugs, the livestock, the air, the weather, the moisture, thanks for everything.
Shelby Stanger:
Brandon learned a lot from his grandmother, including in the Navajo language. He was also taught that running is a way to connect to his creator, to the earth and to the community. Every morning, Brandon goes for a run. The day we spoke, he ran a 5K in the morning before it started snowing. He had plans to go out again after our interview to run another 10K.
In addition to making sure he gets his own runs in, it's equally important for him to make sure his students do the same. Brandon has been a cross country coach at Page High School, his own alma mater for the last three years.
How many years ago did you graduate high school?
Brandon Dugi:
Oh, 2015. So what is that? Eight years.
Shelby Stanger:
So now you coach your high school team.
Brandon Dugi:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you get involved with that?
Brandon Dugi:
So my little brother, he joined the cross country team when he was in middle school. And then into high school, I noticed he was getting more into it and wanting to get more involved, but all his friends, everybody he ran with were up ahead and he was always in the back. So to me, I'm like, "I want to focus on my little brother and just see what I can do with him." There's some things that I've learned when I was in high school with running and just hanging out with a lot of good runners and seeing what they do. So I kind of took a lot of what I learned and kind of taught him at a young age.
And yeah, from there he got into high school and there's two brothers that are really successful runners out in this area. They're twins and they've done amazing things and they both coached here at the high school. And yeah, I went to one of the practices for my little brother and I got to talk to one of the brothers while he was coaching and he just was like, "I see you're around here a lot. You want to help me? You want to help me be an assistant coach?" And I'm like, "This is cool. I get to go to all the meets. I get to do this and that."
So yeah, I did that for about a year and then I just was like, "All right, you're going to be a coach next year."
Shelby Stanger:
So how does your brother do now in races?
Brandon Dugi:
He does really good. So he's a senior this year. His cross country season's over, they won state for their division and-
Shelby Stanger:
Congratulations. That's incredible.
Brandon Dugi:
Yeah, and he's one of the top three runners on the team, so.
Shelby Stanger:
You are an awesome big brother. So you're not that much older than the kids you coach. I mean, what do they think of you?
Brandon Dugi:
More than anything they think of me kind of like a big brother. I kind of get what they're talking about with some of the things they say and just kind of bonding with them a little more. After practice I would be like, "Let's go out and let's go make this, let's go out and do this." And then it became a thing of doing team nights. Once a week we would do a team night, we would go to someone's house, whoever's parents will allow us to go to their house and we make pizza, we make sushi rolls and just hang out and just bond with the team.
That's something that when I took on this little cross country coaching job was to make it fun. A lot of people take things serious and there's times where you do have to get serious, but a lot of the time it's just welcoming everybody. And not only the talented ones, but the ones that are trying.
Shelby Stanger:
A huge part of Brandon's work is about teaching people that running isn't just about winning the next race. For Brandon, it's about showing the world a different perspective of the sport, one that connects Brandon with his Dine heritage. When we come back, Brandon talks about the film he made with HOKA called Time To Hozho. He also tells us more about being a Navajo runner and the Water Is Life project that he and his family started.
Brandon Dugi is a runner, photographer and high school cross country coach. It's safe to say he wears a lot of different hats, but there's one thread that connects all of his work, representing and supporting the Dine people of the Navajo Nation. In 2019, the brand HOKA One One reached out to Brandon and started building a relationship with him. After years of collaboration and sponsorship, they decided to make a film to share his story.
So when did HOKA find you?
Brandon Dugi:
Yeah, so I was sharing a lot of my photography work on social media and a buddy of mine was like, "Maybe you should make a running account because you are sharing your running stuff on your photography channel." So I did that. I created a running account and was sharing all my adventure runs I would do, the races, the training, kind of what I would go through, my ups and downs. And yeah, HOKA saw kind of what I was doing and how my story and where I came from was a little different. And then as they got to know me a little more through these blogs and these posts and these little interviews I had with them, they wanted to create a film and that's where the Time To Hozho came to life.
They brought up this idea of doing a film about what it's like to run on the reservation and it being of indigenous Dine people and that's what it was about and that's where the film came to life.
My grandmother in Navajo would say, "[foreign language 00:13:38]", which means "if it's up to anybody, it's up to you." You have a choice in life, whether it's positive or negative, it's nobody's fault but yours.
Growing up on the reservation, we were always taught to wake up in the morning and start your day off with a run and greet the creator. You want to be up when the sun is rising, showing the creator that you're not laying down, you're not being lazy. Some Navajos, they'll get up and they'll yell real loud to let the creator know we're awake, we're here and we will always be here.
Shelby Stanger:
Can you say the name of the film for me?
Brandon Dugi:
Time To Hozho.
Shelby Stanger:
And what does that mean, Hozho?
Brandon Dugi:
Hozho, it could mean a lot of things, but to me, "time to Hozho" means to time to walk in beauty or time to run in beauty kind of a thing. And that's what I do with running and what I see in running is, is to walk in beauty.
Shelby Stanger:
So what impact did this movie have on you? I mean, that's a big deal to make a little movie with HOKA.
Brandon Dugi:
Yeah. At the time, well, if I'm going to be honest, I didn't really think it was anything big. I was just like, "Oh, it's a film we're doing, this is cool." Not until afterwards seeing the impact was like, I'm like, "What in the world?" And just the reaction it got was over the roof. That's when I was like, "Holy smokes, we actually did something crazy here."
And to actually see it kind of reach people deep down in a way was so special. I mean, my mom is really, she's really high on trying to show people that film as much as she can. So she owns a restaurant here in Page and whenever she meets people, she'll talk about the culture, but then she'll bring up the film and then she'll show people. And there's been times where I'll walk in and I can see her showing a family a film, and I've seen people cry and I'm just like, "Oh my gosh." It's really, that film's special to me, so.
Shelby Stanger:
What do you think it showed people?
Brandon Dugi:
I think it showed people, one, what it is like to be and to live on indigenous land as a Dine, as a Navajo, but also to look at this thing we call running as something different. You can run competitively and try to beat someone, try to win a race, but there's more to that than just trying to be the fastest person ever. And to me, I feel like that's where people, it really hits people that, "Okay, this running thing is not just about competing. It's more about finding who you are and what it will do to you and what it can do to you."
Shelby Stanger:
Running is an innate part of Brandon's culture and it's also a connector. The video he made with HOKA gave him access to an audience he'd never reached before. Brandon jumped on the opportunity to raise funds and make an impact for his community.
You're also this incredibly philanthropic guy. So not only do you coach the cross country team and give your time to these high schoolers and you're telling your community's story, but you're bringing water to people, water tanks. Talk to me about Water Is Life and this program you started.
Brandon Dugi:
So back when I did the whole thing with HOKA, I decided to start this Water Is Life GoFundMe kind of nonprofit organization that me and my family kind of put together, and it's just we raise money to help buy water tanks for families out on the reservation because a good amount of people that live on the reservation still to this day don't have running water and electricity. So them living like 20, 30 miles away from a big city, they got to go into town, fill those water tanks up and bring it back. And some of them, the water tanks get old, they crack and they don't have money for new ones and they're using old tanks and it's just not healthy. Yeah, so just helping out those people out deep in the reservation as much as I can, and this is one thing that we did and we raised a good amount and we just throw all that back out to purchasing these water tanks and we take them out to different families on the reservation from all over the res.
And yeah, it helps with them having clean water, but also them having water for their livestock because people still to this day, that's all they have.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah.
Brandon Dugi:
And it's really bone dry out here and if we can supply these families with as many water tanks as we can, it's a lot easier and less worry for them.
Shelby Stanger:
Brandon is dedicated to celebrating his indigenous roots and sharing the story of his people with the world. He lives in a stunning part of the southwest. And in addition to running, Brandon is a landscape photographer. His work captures the vast open beauty of the Navajo Nation. In the Arizona desert, cliffs rise up thousands of feet, forming canyons to explore from above and below. Mesas stretch for hundreds of miles and there are so many beautiful kinds of soil like sandstone and clay. Brandon captures all of it with soul. In many ways, his photography career has helped support his running and vice versa.
Okay, so you've done all these amazing things with running, but you're also a photographer. Talk to me about your photography career and how you got into it.
Brandon Dugi:
I got into it in high school actually, joining the photography class that they had here in Page. I got to learn the basics and then advancing to more landscape adventure photography from the guy who took me under his wing, Milo Fowler, he's another Dine photographer that lived in the area of Page. He grew up here and I kind of looked up to him in a way with his photography because he was doing a lot of cool things back when he was a lot younger and I was still in middle school and I would just see him roll up in this nice truck, adventure, going out and I saw all the adventures he would go on, all these photos he would take, and I'm like, "That's something I'll want to do."
And it was so awesome because I knew him just from living in the area and he picked me up and he took me in as he had these workshops, they call them Navajo land workshops, and they were super expensive. A whole week and people would pay a lot just for him to take them out to these places. And he took me and it was like, "You don't have to worry about nothing, you'll just shadow me this whole trip." And I learned a lot about photography from him and from that experience. And we went to all these cool places and he taught me a lot.
Shelby Stanger:
We love Milo Fowler. He was a great guest on Wild Ideas Worth Living. I had a feeling you two knew each other. So how have you found a way to combine photography and running into a career? How do you use the two now?
Brandon Dugi:
A lot of these cool places that I get to go and get to see, it's very hard for other people to go and to see. This is hard to get to if you don't know the area really well. So for me with running, it became a thing where I would go on these adventure runs, these long treks and I would take my camera with me and I would document them and I saw that I was getting more attention with that. It was just easier for these companies to want to work with me because I'm able to get to these places that they can't really get to and shoot them and yeah, really show the world and show the people what else is out there.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that you run to take photos. I think it's so cool. Or hike in to do it. I mean, this might sound like a stupid question, but what do you carry your camera gear in so you can run with it?
Brandon Dugi:
Yeah, so it's so cool now that nowadays, you can shoot a lot of things just with your phone. I mean, really you can.
Shelby Stanger:
Yep.
Brandon Dugi:
So I carry like my phone, I have a GoPro that I have and I document all my stuff either on my phone or my GoPro and then I'll take one of my mirrorless cameras that I have and I'll just shove it into my running pack.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, that's awesome. I love it. And you've talked a lot about the importance of recognizing the Navajo Nation. How are you doing that through running and photography? And yeah, how has that become such a big part of your life? I think it's really cool.
Brandon Dugi:
To me, when it comes with running and photography, it is important to let people know that I am from the Navajo reservation, I am Dine, and that I am doing it, I guess you can say. Just really putting it out there because when it comes to races, I can hop on the starting line and I can look over my shoulder and 99% of the people aren't Navajo, they're not Native American. And it's just really special to be able to do these things, whether it's taking photos and stepping on a starting line where it's big and you're different. You come from an area that nobody knows of, a lot of people really don't know of. And to me, that's like that needs to be brought up because I do want people to know more about the Navajo reservation, the Native Americans, and really show that like we are still here and we can still do it and we'll always be here.
Shelby Stanger:
What do you wish more people knew about the Dine people?
Brandon Dugi:
I guess just our story, what we've gone through and what we still go through today. I think that's one thing that gets shadowed away a lot. People just think that we're just the everyday life kind of people, but once they hear our story and where we come from and how we grew up and how we are still growing up, having things taken from us, whether that's our land being moved to different areas, I just feel like it's shadowed away a lot and not a lot of people know because they're not educated about it.
Shelby Stanger:
Brandon's life as a runner and a photographer goes deeper than his work as an athlete and as an artist. So much of what he does is centered on supporting his community. Whether it's coaching local high school students, bringing water to people on the reservation or celebrating his Dine culture, Brandon's daily life is filled with opportunities to do what he loves while giving back.
Brandon Dugi, thank you so much for coming on Wild Ideas Worth Living. Your ability to wear multiple hats to support your community is admirable. Thank you so much for the work you do in this world. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more about Brandon, check out his new film on REI's YouTube channel. You can watch it at youtube.com/REI. To learn more about Brandon's Water Is Life campaign, check out the link in our show notes.
You can learn more about his photography at Brandon_Dugi on Instagram. That's B-R-A-N-D-O-N_ D-U-G-I. There you'll find a link to his running account, which is Brandon_Runz. That's B-R-A-N-D-O-N_ R-U-N-Z.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. And Sam is actually going to Arizona this month where he'll be admiring the beautiful landscapes of the southwest. Our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paulo Motola and Joe Crosby.
As always, we appreciate when you follow this show, rate it and review it wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.