3/16/23

Another racist incident mars high school hoops

In 1888 L. Frank Baum of Oz fame began editing the South Dakota newspaper The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer where he advocated for the extermination of American Indians. In the early days of South Dakota statehood Indian agents embezzled federal funds meant for tribal nations, just like James McLaughlin did. Mount Rushmore is South Dakota's premier example of white nationalist ideology. Its sculptor was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Little has changed.

In 2015 after Trace O'Connell and a wad of other entitled white guys from Philip spilled beer on a group of American Horse School students Rapid City businesses shat all over themselves trying to extinguish the wildfire of anger. Organizers of the Lakota Nation Invitational even sought alternative locations for the annual event — Sioux Falls, Bismarck and Spearditch were considered. That same year Watertown High School finally dropped a racist ritual called Ki-Yi.

In 2017 a South Dakota school board voted unanimously to cancel homecoming activities that would have featured a football game between the Sturgis Scoopers and the Pine Ridge Thorpes after a car bearing hate speech and a symbol painted on it that some said resembled a swastika was smashed by Sturgis students. 

In April 2019 sleepy Vermillion became ground zero for Donald Trump's war on America in South Dakota by hosting Charlie Kirk. 

In 2022 five tribal chairpersons and presidents called for a boycott of Rapid City after the owners of the Grand Gateway Hotel leveled racist diatribes at Indigenous Americans there. Confederate flags routinely fly in Rapid City showing support for racism in like-minded states, South Carolina and Mississippi. Many more come out during the Sturgis Rally.
On Saturday, Feb. 11, at a high school basketball game in Newell, South Dakota, Newell High School (NHS) spectators attacked Tiospaye Topa School (TTS) high school student athletes with hateful racial epithets. After the final buzzer, adults from both sides of the gymnasium met in the middle of the floor and exchanged heated remarks. In a letter to the Tiospaye Topa School Board after the game, parent Shawn Traversie said, “Racism in sports against our children has been happening for far too long, enough is enough.” Numerous sources relate that racist verbal attacks against Native students have been common for many years at sporting events in Indian Country. [After racist verbal assault on student athletes, one parent says, “Enough is enough.”]
Newell is a horrible little town. Wendel Hiland was a Newell-area handyman and self-styled 'sovereign citizen' who faced 300 years in prison after he was arrested and charged in 2013 with 30 counts of abuse of a minor over the age of seven. He raped a minor, forced her into child marriage and has called Attorney General Marty Jackley "as crooked as they come." Hiland now lives in Moyie Springs, Idaho in the bowels of the American Redoubt.

But, it’s not just South Dakota — Natives in Montana suffer abuse from white attendees at basketball games, too.
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