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- By Levi Rickert
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Pictureworks Entertainment, the National Congress of American Indians, and several of Jim Thorpe’s descendants announced Wednesday the launch of “Take Back What Was Stolen,” an initiative to restore Thorpe’s status as the sole gold medal champion of the 1912 Olympic decathlon and pentathlon.
It was 108 years ago today, July 15, 1913, when Thorpe (Sac and Fox, Potawatomi) was awarded two Olympic gold medals at the Stockholm Olympic Games.
The next year after his Olympic victory, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stripped Thorpe of his two gold medals and struck his name from the Olympic history books. Thorpe set incredible records in track and field.
The heavy-handed IOC measures came about because of a smear campaign that revealed he played minor league baseball prior to the 1912 Summer Games. Between 1909 and 1910, Thorpe was compensated for room and board. At the time, this was an infraction under IOC rules, which barred Olympians from participating in any sports for pay so that they could be classified as amateurs during competition. Throughout subsequent decades, Thorpe’s children and biographer Robert Wheeler and his wife Florence Ridlon convinced the IOC in the 1980s to reinstate his gold medal status. They eventually succeeded and his children were presented with duplicate gold medals in 1983.
However, the IOC did not go far enough. They neglected to restore Thorpe’s records and relegated him to co-champion––the silver winners, the athletes he’d previously beaten, had their silver medals elevated to gold when Thorpe was stripped of his remarkable achievements. The IOC allowed those athletes to keep their golds.
The “Take Back What Was Stolen” petition calls for the IOC to make things right, to take the necessary steps to correct history and restore Thorpe’s proper status as the sole gold medalist in both the decathlon and pentathlon.
The petition and signatures will serve to support the resolution introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last November by Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM), tribal citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, to compel the IOC to correct the Olympic records set by Thorpe.
“This petition is an effort to gather over one million names and voices united in support of Jim and American athletic excellence, and Native American resilience,” said Nedra Darling, executive producer of Pictureworks Entertainment. “In a time where Americans, and arguably people all around the world, are confronting their long-held, discriminatory beliefs and behaviors, this is a tremendous opportunity for the IOC to get on the right side of history.”
The petition is part of a series of initiatives tied to “Bright Path,” the upcoming feature film chronicling Thorpe’s life and legacy from Pictureworks Entertainment.
Actor Martin Sensmeier (Tlingit, Koyukon-Athabasca)has been tapped to play the lead role of Thorpe in “Bright Path.”
The Tuolumne Band of Mewuk Indians, Mohegan Tribe, Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Tonto Apache Tribe, the Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria, the Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-wuk Indians of California, Sealaska Corporation, and Shingle Springs of Miwok Indians have partnered with Pictureworks Entertainment on “Bright Path.”
You can sign the petition here.
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