Issue link: http://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25044
The road in the South Dakota Badlands leading up to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation passes through the Ploorest community in America. Desolate trailers are scattered on yards fi lled with rotting car frames but, looking across the ancient seabed prairie, you realize that this place is as extraordinary as it is·paradoxical. Econom(cally poor, culturally rich, the BaEllands are where Lakota spirituality nego tiates with American pop culture for the minds of American Indian youth. It is S0me imes hard to tell which is the more dominant force: traditional Lakota beliefs or 200 channels of TV. But eac}J june, the Lakota leaders pass on their tradition by holding a five-day SOO-mile runz around tme Black Hil ls. Part race! part ritual, the Sacred Hoop SOO is designed to , capture the saGred spirit of the Pama Sapa (Lakota for "hills of black"), . promete the reC0gnition of treaty rights and unify the Lakota people. It traces a SOO-mile "Red Track" that, ad:ording to legend, animals formed when racing around the Black Hills Clntil they died, hl<>orl;". into the Earth. Today" it is a series of interstates and back roads eling throwgh South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana, a ict,,,,,,, m,"y L,ko" ",md ,i,,,. 0,,, Ii" d Y', 'h,,, '"m', with runners aged 6 to 66, relay a sacred staff-adorned with eagle feathers and red ribbons-from one to another as pickup trucks simultaneously retrieve exhausted team members and drop off rested ones. To the casual observer, this could be any group of Americans in I 1997 complete with Nike, Gatorade, rap !T1usic and competitive fathers. But for the Lakota, the Sacred Hoop SOO is a chance to simultaneously confront drugs, alcohol and violence on the reservation and show that the Black Hills are sti ll theirs to call home. ------ -- June 15, 1997 • - Pine Ridge, South Dakota Sporting Oakley wraparound shades and a slicked back, black ponytail, a 19- year-old Oglala Sioux Indian pulls his Chevrolet pickup truck onto the dirt road leading up to a mobile home. He turns up the volume of his radio and hip-hop booms from his speakers. A group of Lakota, busy piling sleeping bags and suitcases into vans and pickups, looks at him. Fred Brings Him Back, an 18-year-old cross-country standout, adjusts his glasses and fingers the cross hanging around his neck. He asks Sean Sierra and Everett Jealous, two other runners on the Lakota Oyate "team, if Russell Little Spotted Horse is running with them this year. "Yeah," Sean replies in between rapping along to a song on the radio. He wears his bandanna backwards like his favorite rap singer, Tupac Shakur. Everett installs a CB radio into his truck. He watches Fred as he tests it. "Freddy. Freddy Baby's Got Back. Come in Fred."