Photo illustration by Mark Riechers. Original public domain images by 1933 Goudey Sport Kings and Bob Edgren. (CC0)
During his traditional Sac and Fox funeral in Oklahoma, Jim Thorpe's body was stolen by his third wife and sold to a small Pennsylvania town that renamed itself "Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania." His body is still there — as Native American activist Suzan Shone Harjo says — as a trophy and as a tourist trap. Jim Thorpe's story of athletic achievement runs parallel to the worst of American history - forced relocation to reservations, boarding schools, and attempted genocide.
- Rapper Tall Paul’s album is called, “The Story of Jim Thorpe." Tall Paul is an Anishinaabe and Oneida Hip-Hop artist enrolled on the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota.
- Biographer David Maraniss is the author of "Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe."
- Activist Suzan Shown Harjo is the recipient of a 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom. She is Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee.
- Patty Loew is the director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University. She is a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.