Thursday, April 5, 2012

Native American Athletes Leaving the Reservation



Exploration 3

Living in Oklahoma for a few years, I got a up close look at what Native Americans are really like. Rather than being just a bunch of orange skinned people with feather hanging out of their head, they deal with a lot of issues that city people go through. In states such as Texas, Oklahoma and Montana where Native American life can be seen more frequently, you find awesome stories like the one I found on ESPN.com. Leaving the reservation is a huge deal for Native Americans, especially women. It is not uncommon for high school-aged native American women to have children mid way through their high school lives. In this story that Bob Ley of ESPN did which looked at Native Americans in the sports culture, there was a woman from a tribe in Montana that had a full ride to the University of Montana to play basketball. On this woman's high school basketball team, 3 out of the 4 seniors also had children and still managed to win a state championship. Being a huge basketball fan, I can understand how hard it would be to have to choose between pursuing your dream in college basketball or staying on the reservation with a child and do nothing with your God-given talents to play the game.

This article also looked at Native American's making it to the NHL, NBA and professional lacrosse. Also, the issue with using Native American mascots is brought up. Is it wrong to use names such as Fighting Sioux, Fighting Illini, Indians, Seminoles or Chiefs? Does this diminish the Native American culture?

ESPN article




2 comments:

  1. It is interesting to see what others have to decide what to do between what they love and where they come from. I do feel that these names associated with the sports teams are not good to have. The sports world is often looked upon poorly and one my find that the association of the tribes names with different teams is an insult.

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  2. Wow, I find it surprising that many of them have children before they even graduate, especially being involved in sports. But, I guess you could argue that they're preparing for the rest of their lives, and sports would only be a small portion of that in comparison to raising their family, which would be lifelong.

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