Lakota Hoops
Critical Issues in Sport and Society
Michael A. Messner, Douglas Hartmann, and Jeffrey Montez de Oca, Series Editors
Critical Issues in Sport and Society features scholarly books that help expand our understanding of the new and myriad ways in which sports is intertwined with social life in the contemporary world. Using the tools of various scholarly disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, history, media studies, and others, books in this series investigate the growing impact of sports and sports-related activities on various aspects of social life as well as key developments and changes in the sporting world and emerging sporting practices. The following series authors have produced groundbreaking research that brings empirical and applied work together with cultural critique and historical perspectives, all written in an engaging, accessible format.
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Cheryl Cooky and Michael A. Messner, No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport, and the Unevenness of Social Change
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Kathryn E. Henne, Testing for Athlete Citizenship: Regulating Doping and Sex in Sport
Jeffrey L. Kidder, Parkour and the City: Risk, Masculinity, and Meaning in a Postmodern Sport
Alan Klein, Lakota Hoops: Life and Basketball on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
Michael A. Messner and Michela Musto, eds., Childs Play: Sport in Kids Worlds
Jeffrey Montez de Oca, Discipline and Indulgence: College Football, Media, and the American Way of Life during the Cold War
Joshua I. Newman, Holly Thorpe, and David L. Andrews, eds., Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body: Materialisms, Technologies, Ecologies
Stephen C. Poulson, Why Would Anyone Do That?: Lifestyle Sport in the Twenty-First Century
Nicole Willms, When Women Rule the Court: Gender, Race, and Japanese American Basketball
Lakota Hoops
Life and Basketball on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
ALAN KLEIN
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London
ISBN 978-1-9788-0405-0 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-9788-0404-3 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-9788-0406-7 (epub)
Library of Congress in Publication Control Number: 2019037918
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copyright 2020 by Alan Klein
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
www.rutgersuniversitypress.org
Manufactured in the United States of America
For the Lakota, who reminded me of the importance of family and humility. For my family, who reminded me of the importance of the Lakota. And for humility, in whatever form it should take.
January in Pine Ridge
Not having seen me since summer, Brad Piper felt inclined to chide my tardiness, You finally came! Basketball seasons already started, and you know how passionate we are about basketball around here. For the Lakota Nation out on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, winter is the most important time of the sports year. Its January, Brad. Why else would I come two thousand miles to South Dakota, I pushed back. And, hey, are those todays scones? The Higher Ground coffee shop has the best coffee and baked goods on the reservation, as well as an unexpected Seattle-coffeehouse feel. Very seductive to coastal wayfarers like me. Brad works for his mother, Belva Thunder Hawk, who started it in 2005.
We talk basketball a lot at Pine Ridge, sometimesdepending on whos aroundfor hours. I may be an outsideran older, white, male anthropologist from the East Coastbut because Lakota basketball is such a passion at Pine Ridge, getting all kinds of people to talk with me about it couldnt have been easier. Still, this morning its bitter cold outside, and Im just waiting for whoever is coming in to close the door!
I drove over an hour to get here, and this morning Route 18, the main road in was dry. What a terrible name for the scenic two-lane road that snakes through Pine Ridge. Its a road filled with opposing forces, at once gentle and wild, undulating plains and jutting mesas, welcoming and deadly. Like a wild mustang trying to shed its first rider, the road seems to simultaneously move up, down, and sideways, explosively yet dreamily. My car hugs the road as it negotiates the curves, rises, and dips. And always, the sky is daubing this endless landscape in a breathtaking light.
In the few years that Ive made this seasonal run to catch these games, Ive seen how treacherous the January weather can be, going from above freezing and sunny to whiteout conditions in just a few hours. White-knuckling best describes the driving in these sudden storms. Unable to see a thing beyond my windshield, I cant go further. And being forced to stop on one of the most deadly roads in the country Im terrified of being plowed into from behind. Theres not even a shoulder for me to seek safety on. So basically, Im immobilized in a box, fearful and cursing January. Route 18 definitely needs a name.
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is home to about 30,000 Oglala Lakota, the largest of the seven bands or council fires making up the Lakota tribe or nation. The other six bands are the Miniconjou, Hunkpapa, Brule, San Arc, Blackfoot, and Two Kettles. The Lakota tribal flag depicts this confederation as a circle of seven white teepees on a red background. The reservations almost 3,500 square miles of plains encases parts of the Badlands, white-cliffed mesas, and rippling terrain, and it sits just east of the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore which is a chronic reminder of land stolen from the Lakota.
At this time of year, you can drive to any reservation in the state, or in the Great Plains region for that matter, and experience the Indian mania for hoops. Along with powwows, basketball, many would argue, is the preferred expression of modern culture for the Lakota. On all six of their reservations in South Dakota, high school gyms are packed, and everyoneboys and girls, young and old, traditional and modernis excited. Part of their fixation with the sport is the distinctive style of play seen all over Indian Country: called rez ball, it is a fast-paced run-and-gun style of play, mixed with an uber-aggressive defense and transition game. Don Wetzel Jr., a Crow Indian in Montana, has a solid sense of rez ball. The son of Montana legend Don Sr. (the first Montana Native to play Division 1 basketball), Don Jr. defines the game as controlled chaos run, run, run and not one guy, but five guys out on the break, over and over again. If the opponents cant handle the ball, they fall apart.
