Interviews at the Indigenes Games

Tanisha Head, 8, took time out of watching the intense basketball game playing on the floor below to stop by the vending machine for a snack. Head had traveled seventeen hours from Ogichidaag, Minnesota with her family to watch her older brother, Tridell Head, 15, play. Tridell was number 24 for Team Minnesota. He had traveled with the team while his younger sister rode with five other people for the Indigenous Games. Tanisha said that she was enjoying the games and her visit to Colorado. Her and her family was planning on going home after the Games were over. When asked if she wanted to play in the Games when she was older, Tanisha said yes and that she would like to play basketball, like her older brother.

Carol, 42, and Becky, 73, Vigil came to Colorado to see today’s Native American youth in the sports world, since their family is a sports family. They had traveled from Tesque Pueblo, New Mexico, an eight-hour trip, to watch the Indigenous Games. They all so said that they were visiting a brother in Longmont, just east of Boulder. They both said that they were enjoying the games immensely, so much so that this reporter had to move with them when they moved from the baseball field to the basketball courts. Carol said that she was pleased that the youth were “getting more involved with Native culture.” She said that language was important and that the elders held the key to the youth involvement in their own culture. Becky said that the disappoint in the youth today was their lack of “respect to their families, communities and culture.” She went on to say that her own family believed that the first language a child should learn is their native language and how her family practiced this belief, in their case, the Tewa language and English as their second language. Becky said that she felt sorry for those that do not know their native languages and even more sorry that their parents do not know the language either.

Meeting Lace Frank’s, 28, mother, both of the Warm Springs or Columbia River Tribe, in line for frybread was an expected pleasure. Frank and her family traveled from Warm Springs, Organ in two different vehicles, one going a day ahead of the other, to come to the games. Lace’s brother was to have been in Baseball for team Organ but the team backed out of the competition before leaving for the games. She said that the coach, Roy Spino, gave many excuses as to why the team had to forfeit, money and the altitude of Colorado and how it will effect the boys performance was gave as a reason. However, Frank and her family still decided to come to Colorado. She liked the games. She felt that they helped unite different tribes by bring them together under common ground. When asked what she did not like about the Games, Lace said that the program for the events were not informative enough, the times were off and they did not announce who was playing whom. Or that they would arrive at the designated time but the event would already be finishing up. So they had to roam around and hope to stumble upon an event in progress. Jamie Scott, 29, Frank’s husband, was in Denver to promote Native Network Media, a “positive movement” to provide a role modal for Native American youth. Scott described bring the Native youth together as “beautiful” so they could met other Native Americans and become friends with them. Since the reservation in which they come from has “no family structure” for its youth, Scott decided to give the youth an opportunity to succeed by seeing those that have, so they would not long think that the reservation was good enough for them. Traveling with their two sons, one six year old and a four mouth old, the family was planning on leaving Denver on Sunday.