In an interview published around 2021, as the campaign for full reinstatement was building, she was direct: “It’s the right thing to do.

In this time of social reckoning, let’s right this wrong.

We can’t change the past but what we can do with better information is to correct it.”

The organization that had been pushing for the correction was called Bright Path Strong — a reference to Thorpe’s Sac and Fox name, Wa-Tho-Huk.

In July 2020, they began circulating a petition calling on the IOC to reinstate Thorpe as the sole winner in both events.

The petition was supported by Billy Mills, a Lakota Oglala Sioux runner who had won gold in the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics — himself one of the most significant Native American athletic achievements in Olympic history — and who understood from his own experience what it meant to carry the weight of Indigenous representation in international sport.