VICE World of Sports Episode Guide: Seven Generations

"Rezball is just the brand of basketball that everyone wants to watch. That's just how it's played there. It's super-fun; it's nonstop. It's an incredible sporting event, mixed with something that I think is very culturally important that a lot of people ignore" - Dan Bradley, Producer, VICE World of Sports.

Reservations by the numbers:

Estimated Indigenous Population of Americas Before Columbus: 20-100 million

Total American Indian and Native Alaskan Population Today: 2.9 million

Percentage of Population: 0.9 percent

Number of people killed at Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge Reservation Land: 250-300

Percentage of Native American death rates, compared to average Americans:

• tuberculosis: 600% higher
• alcoholism: 510% higher
• diabetes: 189% higher
• vehicle crashes: 229% higher
• injuries: 152% higher
• suicide: 62% higher

Population of Pine Ridge: 28,700

Sport and Society

Basketball wasn't invented by Native Americans, per se, but you could argue that Ulama, the MesoAmerican ballgame was a predecessor to the sport. The modern day iteration of basketball was developed by Canadian James Naismith in Massachusetts for his physical education classes indoors. It's fitting, then, that reservations in cold parts of the country—such as Pine Ridge in South Dakota, and the one-time state champion Indians from Winnebago. Nebraska—have adopted basketball as their sport of choice. It's also popular among Navajo, Pueblo, and Apache tribes in Northeastern Arizona and Northwestern New Mexico, with several schools from those regions listed as nationally ranked by NFSH.

But Rezball, as it's affectionately known, isn't just basketball played on a reservation. It has a different entirely than what you see in the NBA. It's fast-paced, high-pressing, shoot, dunk, or move on kind of basketball that's incredibly exciting to watch.

(There are some, ahem, other interpretations of Rez Ball as well.)

Part of the native American basketball legacy is that of Jim Thorpe—arguably one of the greatest athletes of all time. Thorp was mostly known for his running, football, and baseball skills. It was only unearthed in 2005, however, that Thorpe had a stint as a professional basketball player as well.

Catching Up With…

We had a chat with Dan Bradley, a producer with VICE World of Sports about Seven Generations and what it was like to step into a community that is, understandably, cautious about how their story is portrayed. Dan spent a few days without cameras getting to know the people on the Pine Ridge reservation before shooting the episode, and had a window into the of basketball known as Rezball.

What is it about Rezball that makes the style so exciting?

It's seven seconds or less, mixed with if everyone were like Rip Hamilton. Remember how if he didn't have the ball, he just wasn't going to stop moving? That's how the players on Pine Ridge run most offenses, where all five guys were just constantly sprinting from spot to spot, setting back screens and seeing if they can get an open look. It's incredible. You saw that by the end of the game, the refs were dripping sweat, and at practice, everyone can shoot threes and handle the ball. It doesn't even matter who they're inbounding the ball to—if it's a made bucket, they're still going to run, because the second it goes out of bounds, somebody rebounds it, they're gone. It's almost like a tiny version of what the NBA is moving towards: positionless basketball, where everyone can shoot. Everybody do what you're good at, let's run real fast, let's have a lot of fun, and let's see if we can win this game.

It's the exact same thing for the girls. No. 1, the sport is almost equally as big with the girls. And No. 2, it's the exact same style and all these girls are just ballers. The exact same kind of swag and charisma. I think sometimes in the US, it gets taken out of girls basketball in a lot of ways. I don't really know why, but the kind of showmanship that is encouraged more on playgrounds—and that's where it comes from with a lot of male basketball players—you didn't learn to talk shit in your CYO league. You learned to talk shit at the playground where you played pickup. And because a lot of times, it's harder for, and not as inclusionary in a lot of neighborhoods for girls to play pickup, but you'll see there [on the rez], you'll see that it's every bit as much of pull-up, crossover in somebody's face and then let the crowd know what you just did. And that is pretty rad.

Why basketball?

You're in South Dakota, number one. So it's winter for a long time. You have to be inside for a long time. It's also something where basketball is a game where anybody can play it, anybody can pick it up. And you just need five a side. It's also something where, it creates this perfect rallying point for a community when it's negative 10 degrees outside. There's literally nothing to do. There's no pools. A lot of people just hang out outside when it's nice out. But when it's not nice out, there's nothing to do. So this is an opportunity where literally everyone can go, everyone can go watch it. And if not, it's on the radio, everyone can hear it. Everyone can be a part of it in a pretty dark, dull winter. I think that's a part of it, and a lot of the other part of it is that this is an opportunity where no matter what was happening on the reservation, you could see the youth succeed. You can see the youth come together and do something, and I think that's important. It's important for people to see.

At the end of the day, does this feel like a regular high school rivalry? Is it more intense, or is it less intense because of the shared bond?

I think it's more intense because of the roots of it and because the depth of it. For the older generation, the two schools represent very different things. And a lot of ways, they do represent two different thing. Pine Ridge is a public school. Everyone can go there. They have a dormitory on campus—and it's mainly for the kids who live in the town of Pine Ridge—but they're just in situations where it's so much easier for them if they're out of the house five days a week, living in a boarding situation where they can get their work done. Their clothes are going to get washed, they'll have lights, they'll have access to computers.

How much were these kids involved in traditional spirituality?

The kids' parents in a lot of ways have shame about their language. A lot of them still think it's something that should be looked down upon, if someone does speak the language. Because that's what was so driven into them and so ingrained into their culture. I mean, a lot of their parents and grandparents—they'd be arrested if they participated in the Sundance, or participated in sweats. But for these, kids it's something about them having to look back to generations past as a response to really seeing a culture of pain in their parents, and a culture of hurt around them. I think their response was looking to pride in their past, and pride in who they are. And you can see that all the kids—they're just taking pride in the ceremonies.

One thing that didn't really make the episode: that kid Kobe from Red Cloud, he scored his 1,000th point—I think the game before we were there. And they had a quilt ceremony for him before the game. It was something that was a little too complex to glaze over—to say, oh you know, he got a quilt, but we didn't have the time to do it justice. Some of Pine Ridge fans really fucking hate Red Cloud, but you saw that everyone was silent, and everyone was just there at the same time and everyone just has so much appreciation for this kid, and you see these people all come together, and they sang Chief RedCloud's song, and Kobe's a 5th generation grandson of Chief RedCloud. It just was an incredible moment where you see this entire group of people and how everyone feels connected, and I think that's something that the kids have and the kids are kind of bringing, where it's like all of them feel connected and the old community is becoming more connected because of that.

I was particularly compelled by the story of Marty Richards in the episode.

You look at what that kid has to deal with, and that he's a kid who goes to school. He's a kid who's going to receive his high school diploma. His father killed himself when he was a freshman in high school. His mom has lupus, and is back-and-forth out of the hospital, and they didn't know if she was even going to make it. And at the same time to have this kid with his head above water is just incredible. And then beyond that to become a leader in his community? And yet, he's not alone in going through that. There are so many young people going through similar situations.

Did you interact with a lot of former basketball players on the reservation?

Yeah, we talked to a guy named Willy White who was South Dakota Mr. Basketball. His son didn't play basketball at all—just a nice soft-spoken kid who actually does PR for Red Cloud School. He was talking about how his dad didn't want him to play basketball. His dad felt like his own education slipped away because all he did was focus on basketball and he wanted his son focusing on culture and education. And I think that's the reason too why you see all so much ingrained in the game, where you see the pledge of allegiance is in the Lakota, and you see that there are so many more things around it, where the kids are learning the traditional dances and the kids are learning the traditional songs, and that's kind of like a part of basketball too. This represents something bigger.

At first, it was just like, OK, this isn't going to happen. We were reaching out everywhere we could and not getting any response. Eventually a woman named Ella Carlo, a travel representative from Pine Ridge, wrote back and said, hey, I've seen this stuff that you guys do with Carmelo, and I watch the HBO show, and I love Shane Smith. And so she said, I would normally tell you to, in so many words, to fuck off. [Dan's paraphrase]. But I like the way you guys tell stories. How about you come here alone with no cameras for a few days, and we'll see if people want to talk to you. And it was basically her way of seeing what my intentions were, and if I had done the research and if I knew what the situation was beyond every piece that they've had done on them. Because there's countless pieces that've been made there that it's essentially just poverty porn—basically saying 'look at how fucked up this place is.' They've seen that happen over and over again, and nothing gets better from that. If anything, things have gotten considerably worse. Especially with young people—if all they're seeing is that their community's fucked, and the only way they're represented to the outside world, is that this community is full of alcohol, it's full of poor people, and there's nowhere to go—that's why you see this rash of suicide and everything that goes along with it.

This place represents the systematic oppression more than anywhere else. You're talking about Wounded Knee in the '70s. You're talking about the place where the Bureau of Indian Education probably had the most influence. And this cultural rebirth from the youth is incredible, and it's one of the most incredible grassroots movements that you'll see in the United States, period. And so coming with that angle, and seeing the youth as having these incredible challenges that they're facing, and also just seeing the way that they're reacting to it is incredible. That gave people a chance where they wanted to talk differently. If you just give statistics about where they live—they've heard enough of it. They don't want that. Just coming from a bit of a different perspective of how to show a place, you're surprised at how quickly then, that it went from no doors open, to all doors open. After that, and a couple people could vouch for us, and I could go to some games, I could meet some people, I could shake some hands, and people could basically get a read that we weren't going to do that, it changed things tremendously. I still hope that it's well received because a lot of these things are hard to take, and there's a lot of things in there that are hard to see there.