10/06/2026
Wings’ NYC Marathon Team Member Highlight: Kristen Wyman
Kristen Wyman is a citizen of the Hassanamisco Band of the Nipmuc tribe in Massachusetts and has been a runner for nearly 30 years. As an Indigenous person of the Eastern Woodlands, she understands running to be a form of prayer and the continuation of a tradition that has fostered diplomacy, trade, agriculture and celebration amongst the peoples of the Dawnland since time immemorial.
Please keep swiping to learn more about Kristen’s relationship with running, youth programs, and culture. Please also consider donating to her campaign to help Wings’ youth participants .
In April, Kristen completed the Boston Marathon, running for Ohketeau Cultural Center . She is a descendant of the Thomas-Speen line, the original proprietors of the territory of Natick, Massachusetts, where the nation’s earliest reservations and acts of removal took place. Her ancestral lands comprise the entire route of the Boston Marathon. With this in mind, she felt it was her responsibility to take up space on the Boston course to reaffirm her Peoples’ existence and memory of that route as a historical pathway that has protected them for hundreds of years.
Instead of competing for notoriety, Kristen runs as a way to connect with the land and build community amongst other Native runners and cultures. She sees her ability to run as a gift and hopes that each footstep might inspire the youth and elders in her life to cherish and care for their own mobility and well-being.
Kristen is also the live-in caretaker of a 64 acre farm in Millis, MA that serves as a local food hub for intertribal peoples of southern New England. She works to provide access, agricultural skills and food to community at no cost.
She was also recently appointed to serve on the board of Natives Run and proudly serves to inspire and support future tribal marathoners, runners, and runners-walkers.
Kristen is a proud mother and aunt. Her daughters have also embraced running and she is proud to model a physical and spiritual practice that can protect her family’s and community members’ well-being for a lifetime.
Prior to caretaking the land she lives on, Kristen wo
