Indian Relay Racing growing in popularity at home and on the global stage

Indian Relay has been practiced for nearly 500 years in North America and has been an organized sport for more than 100 years.

Now, this exciting extreme sport is rapidly growing in popularity on the global stage.

Dexter Bruised Head, president of the Canadian Indian Relay Racing Association (CIRRA), says Indian Relay is a representation of events that occurred hundreds of years ago.

“There are records of the early days of the Calgary Stampede having relay racing. In the United States, they have been running for the last 90 years, that we know of,” Bruised Head tells Calgary Citizen.

“Everyone was riding bareback in their traditional regalia and painted horses either going to war or going on a buffalo hunt, and that’s how it originated.”

Each relay team has one rider and three other relay team members help control the horses at the start line.

The rider races bareback on thoroughbred horses and jumps from one horse to the next in each lap around a track. In total, the rider does two transfers to three different horses in three laps and the first to pass the finish line is the winner.

A showcase of skill

On modern racetracks, primarily on the Blackfoot and Cree nations of Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan, Indian Relay showcases the skills riders have been using for hundreds of years, now employed in the form of a competitive race.

Riders must be skilled, highly athletic competitors with many years of training, as this intense, fast sport is dangerous and requires immense focus.

Bruised Head had his first taste of Indian Relay in 2016 when his family created a team to compete.

“We’d always look forward to events held on our nation,” he says.

Bruised Head was then selected to organize the event, leading to the creation of the CIRRA.

“I realized people wanted more, the racers wanted more, and the fans wanted more,” Bruised Head says.

Tapping into tradition

CIRRA helped get Indian Relay Racing out of the gate and growing, and, as the association gained attention, other organizations began popping up around Alberta and Saskatchewan. 

There are now several organizations across the two provinces coordinating events for the 2023 season.

“A lot of our elders who grew up riding horseback love this event for its traditions, and it brings them back to their childhoods,” Bruised Head says.

The pandemic had a significant effect on the relay, notes Bruised Head.

“I was very afraid when COVID happened because we lost several elders on our nation due to COVID, and I did not want to lose any elders simply because they wanted to do something they enjoyed.”

Bruised Head made the difficult decision to cancel 2020 events and most events in 2021 in order to protect his community.

“I was fine with that. We had lost too many on our nation,” he adds.

Bruised Head is hoping to get the CIRRA back up and running in the near future.

Growing in popularity

Indian Relay Racing as a sport has been growing rapidly in popularity over the past decade.

The sport’s first years were organized by Lavina Many Guns at the Strathmore rodeo grounds. At the time, there were only 15 or 16 teams.

In 2023, there will be upwards of 45 teams, according to Calgary photographer Julie Vincent, who has been documenting the sport with Jason Lawrence since 2018, culminating in their photography exhibition, INDIAN.RELAY.

The popular project happened by chance when a team came to install the fence between their home and the new build home beside them.

“They came on a hot day and had an older dog with them, so I went out to see if they wanted water.”

A conversation ensued during which Vincent asked one of the builders, Steven Wolf Tail, about his injured knee.

“I asked him what had happened, and he said he was injured when he came off a horse during a relay,” Vincent says, adding Wolf Trail invited the duo to a relay event over the 2018 Canada Day weekend in Strathmore.

“We had no idea what we were going to see, as we’d never heard of relay, but we hauled our cameras out there, and asked if we could shoot from the infield.”

Vincent says they were hooked after the first heat.

“It is the most intense, fast, dangerous, beautiful, amazing sport I have ever witnessed. The athleticism these riders have is unparalleled,” Vincent says.

“We’re very grateful for that fateful day, and that brief conversation with Steve. We would never have known about this amazing sport had we not met him.”

A global photography exhibition

Vincent and Lawrence’s love for the sport and their documentary photography transformed into an exhibition with the encouragement of their good friend, Rhonda Cooper-Burgess, who is Cree.

The photographers then approached Wolf Tail and his parents, Wyonah and Irvin, seeking their permission to follow them around the relay circuit and to the first international championships in Walla Walla, Washington in 2018.

A portrait of Wolf Tail from that first event in Strathmore is the key image of INDIAN.RELAY.

In addition to collaborating with the Wolf Tail family, the photographers sought the advice and blessing of Bruised Head, Many Guns, and the Indigenous coordinators at the Calgary Central Library.

There were also many conversations with teams and riders throughout the 2018 and 2019 seasons.

The exhibition was mounted first at Calgary’s new Central Library for two months, beginning with Indigenous Heritage Month in 2019, and was mounted in four other Calgary exhibitions between 2019 and 2021.

The exhibition then travelled to the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, where it was displayed from June to September 2022 to encompass Indigenous Heritage Month and the Day of Truth and Reconciliation in September.

The exhibition is currently mounted at the Equine Cultural Foundation in Tokyo and will move to the foundation’s Osaka location in mid-April before it’s mounted at the Hokkaido Museum of Northern Peoples during April and May 2023.

Concurrently, the exhibition is open to the public daily at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC until the end of May.

Both photographers are keenly aware of the reasons for this exhibition.

“We are not the story. We are the means by which the sport, the teams, the riders, and this aspect of Indigenous culture is exposed to a wider audience.”

A passion project

The duo’s work has been well-received by the Indigenous community, with their images being used in relay posters advertising events and on the internet. 

“Our contribution to relay is to make great photos and make sure all the teams we photograph have these photos to use however they wish to promote their team, their events, to obtain sponsorships, and to grow the audience,” Vincent says.

The photographers provide images to the teams free of charge and have self-funded the project entirely.

Vincent and Lawrence have worked together with Bruised Head, team managers, and athletes within the Indian Relay world to create art that represents the culture of the Indigenous sport.

They are hopeful they will be able to continue showcasing Indian Relay around the world.

“Staff at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo have been exceptionally generous sourcing other places to mount this exhibition,” Vincent says.

“The embassies are very supportive of the artists whose work they host so we hope this exhibition will move to other locations in the US after it leaves the embassy in DC. One of our hopes is this exhibition will ignite interest in this incredible sport and will spur tourists visiting Alberta and Saskatchewan to attend relays.”

‘Wow’

Bruised Head says the attention INDIAN.RELAY has garnered has been a welcome addition.

“Photography played a huge role in our fan base because they could not get enough of the pictures,” Bruised Head says.

“When they put this exhibit together, I thought it was a really great idea. When I first saw it at the Calgary Central Library, I thought ‘wow.’”

As the popularity of the sport grows, so too do the winnings.

“The purses have increased substantially from their beginnings, hovering around $10,000 per event to $100,000 in 2019 at the Century Downs event,” Vincent says.

“We absolutely love this sport, and we just want to help promote it and see it grow.”  

The 2023 relay season kicks off this May at Century Mile in Edmonton. There are relays across Alberta and Saskatchewan every weekend during the summer, culminating with the championships at Century Downs in Calgary in late August.

The Calgary Stampede hosts a relay every night following the chuckwagons. Relay events and dates are easily found by searching for Indian Relay on Facebook, where you can find and support your favourite teams.