Lakota Hoops by Alan Klein

Author:Alan Klein [Klein, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation, General, Basketball, Social Science, Indigenous Studies, Cultural & Social Aspects
ISBN: 9781978804067
Google: OVndDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2020-06-12T05:25:37+00:00

Resilience

There’s an old anthropological adage I learned as an undergraduate student: “Women are the guardians of kinship.” I took that to mean that women are the glue of society, that they keep the family together when centrifugal forces threaten its core. It’s not the cliché that women are caring “by nature” so much as it is that, in the social complexities they face, women are more adept at figuring out how to survive bad situations because they grasp the importance of kinship. They develop strategies to raise their children in part by keeping kinsmen close for mutual support; women also tend to see protecting kinship as a mission that helps the community survive.

Laura’s aunt, Yvonne “Tiny” DeCory, is just one example of this kind of woman. This aging dynamo has fostered goodwill and aid throughout her life, whether by participating in women’s causes, aiding in teen-suicide prevention, or tending to her family. In the wake of that uptick in teen suicides on Pine Ridge, DeCory has redoubled her efforts. “In the Lakota culture, we have a circle within ourselves and within our families,” she explained. “When we neglect parts of that circle, we lose hope, we lose faith, and we lose spirituality. If families can strengthen that circle, hope, faith, and spirituality can be returned.… I plan to be more visible than ever in the lives of our young people. We have to have continuity, and as adults we have to be consistent.”12

In another poignant illustration of the adage about women, the documentary film Kind Hearted Woman13 features the late Robin Poor Bear Charboneau, a thirty-two-year-old divorced single mother and Oglala Sioux woman living on North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation. Ensnared in a history of abuse and alcoholism, she struggled to hold on to her ties with her children after the tribal courts took them from her. She juggled hardships as if they were sixteen-pound bowling balls—deliberately, slowly, and always bracing herself. We watch her try to remain sober (which she does), battle in court for the return of her children, attend college classes, and even attempt a relationship. In the end, she was masterful at keeping it all together and, most important, at rekindling her relationship with her children.

Laura is cut from the same cloth. But, for every Lakota who withstands Shakespeare’s “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” there are many others that bend. Some even break.

“They’re all different,” Laura said about the girls who play for her, “but one thing I see a lot of in my girls is that they don’t really have a home to go to. They don’t have someone who’s gonna be in the stands for them, letting them know how proud they are.” Laura is talking about the unpaid part of her coaching job—the part where she tries to repair broken young girls. “This is where Corey (her partner) and I come in. We’ve talked about it a million times about getting a bigger house and taking in more kids—at least doing what we did with Santana (a former player of hers) getting her through high school.

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