ESPN’s Dana O’Neil has a lengthy take on the basketball program at Haskell Indian Nations University, contrasting its proximity to the elite basketball program at the University of Kansas, just 10 minutes away in Lawrence.

As she writes here:

The Jayhawks work on a practice court in a facility so new the smell of fresh paint still fills the air. The court is part of a $42 million renovation/addition to venerable Allen Fieldhouse, a renovation that’s added concourse space for the fans and a tricked-out locker room and suite for the players. A wall of flat-screen televisions greet the Jayhawks in their team room to allow for multiple-game viewing, and the leather recliners are straight out of Archie Bunker’s fantasy world.

At Haskell, meanwhile, players had been evicted from their court the day she visited to make way for an H1N1 flu clinic. On the plus side, the team now has its own locker room, with hand-me-down lockers from KU’s football team.

“We didn’t even change in here before,” forward Kevin Begaye, who is Navajo, tells her. “We’d come to practice or games already dressed.”

Haskell Athletic director and coach Ted Juneau is mindful of a far more crucial difference between the two programs:

There is a gulf of opportunity dividing the two with unsparing cruelty.

The kids wearing Jayhawks blue have been seasoned and scouted since they were preteens. With high schools versed in the language of NCAA eligibility and summer-league teams crisscrossing the country so they can showcase their skills, these kids have been given every chance to make it to college.

The players at Haskell are the rarity, the handful of kids who actually have graduated high school (the dropout rate on reservations is 40.7 percent), let alone made it to college.

As for basketball, they also have played the game their whole lives but they have played in a hoops black hole. College coaches don’t even look for them, let alone watch them.

“”In some ways,” Juneau tells O’Neil, “it mirrors what’s happened to Natives in this country. They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they try to join the general population, they encounter problems and discrimination. If they stay on the reservation, what is there for them there?”

Gwen Florio

Unfortunately, a shooting outside this week’s Lakota Nation Invitational in Rapid City, S.D., has largely obscured the main event.

That would be basketball – and the fact that White River triumphed among the boys’ teams and Cheyenne-Eagle Butte bested Pine Ridge for the girls’ title.

The Tigers, reports the Rapid City Journal here, “absolutely dismantled” the Red Cloud Crusaders, 85-72. They won their second LNI boys’ title in a row in a game watched by some 5,000 people.

In girls’ play, the Lady Braves ended a three-year lock by Pine Ridge, 64-57.

“There are no words to describe how I feel about this,” tournament most valuable player Lacy Leaf of Cheyenne-Eagle Butte tells the Journal’s Padraic Duffy, here.

“It just feels so good. It took us this long, but this team is a family and we came together and won this.”

Gwen Florio

Might makes wrong: “Avatar” borrows from Native Americans’ loss
This Chicago Tribune review of war films focuses especially on “Avatar,” mentioning a theme we’ve been waiting for someone to write about: the fact that the Na’vi people seem so strongly based on Native Americans. The review says that director James Cameron “freely samples all sorts of genocidal history, with a visual and thematic emphasis on the Native American’s loss of the West,” although the movie also strongly references Iraq.

“Palestine, New Mexico” delves into tribal identity
Continuing the entertainment theme, a new play by Richard Montoya focuses on tribal thinking and identity – and not just in Indian Country. The Los Angeles Times terms the U.S. military itself is a “tribe” in the play, which also focuses on how a Native American nation must deal with the loss of a soldier, killed by tribal people in Afghanistan.

Peruvian chief says probe into violence against indigenous people is biased
Indian Country Today correspondent Renzo Pipoli reports here that Apu Cervando Puertas of the Awujan Tribe says a probe into violence against his people is actually meant to instill more fear. More than 33 indigenous people were killed by police this summer as the tribes staged protests against development of their land.

Two arrested in shooting at Lakota Nation Invitational
Two teenagers have been charged with shooting a third man outside the Lakota Nation Invitational basketball tournament in Rapid City, S.D., last week. Simon Torres, 19, has been charged with attempted murder; Joel Little, 19, is charged with accessory to attempted murder, the Rapid City Journal reports. The victim, Shane Bordeaux, 20, was listed in critical condition before his family requested that no more updates be given.

Columnist: Shots will echo in LNI’s future
Rapid City Journal columnist Kevin Woster reviews talk that the shooting at the Lakota Nation Invitational will threaten the future of the famed tournament. But Woster says that the tournament’s strong emphasis on education, as well as sports, will help it overcome the fallout from the shooting.

Gwen Florio

Tiger Woods has won the Notah Begay III (FSY) Foundation Challenge skins tournament to benefit Native youth. (Read the USA Today story here.)

Begay was Woods’ roommate at Stanford, and is the only Native player on the PGA Tour. He established the tournament, to promote physical fitness – especially through soccer and golf – among Native children.

The event is a collaboration between the Oneida Indian Nation of New York and San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians of California and was held at at Turning Stone Resort’s Atunyote Golf Club in New York. This year’s tournament raised $750,000 for Begay’s foundation.

Gwen Florio

“Jim Thorpe: The World’s Greatest Athlete,” will chronicle the life of the member of the Sac and Fox Nation who among many feats got involved in sports at the Carlisle Indian School, set records in the 1912 Olympics, and then saw his medals stripped away amid questions about his amateur status.

The idea behind the new documentary, says this Native Times story, is to put that familiar story in a much broader historical context.

“In many ways he was emblematic of the American Indian experience in the 20th Century,” says co-producer, Joseph Bruchac, who is of Abenaki descent.

The film also aims to flesh out the personality of a man too often portrayed, says Thorpe’s son Jack, “as that poor drunken Indian.”

But, says his son, “be’s a legend – a legend in Indian Country.”

How about, in the whole country?

Gwen Florio

It appears to be a day for posts about things delayed. First, the Cobell case; then the interminable indecision on federal recognition for Little Shell Chippewa. Now there’s this story about Maine – finally – giving official recognition to the man believed to be the first Native American to play major league ball.

Yesterday, the Penobscot tribe honored both Louis Sockalexis, who played for Cleveland Spiders in 1897, and his cousin, Andrew, who placed fourth in the marathon in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Louis could throw a baseball across the Penobscot River; Andrew trained in the winter on that same frozen river, running with spikes on his shoes, according to this Boston Globe story. The Maine Legislature honored the two last month.

But Penobscot leaders say the National Baseball Hall of Fame still won’t acknowledge Louis Sockalexis as the first Native player in the majors, and Sports Illustrated omitted the cousins from its 1999 list of 50 greatest Maine athletes. The Globe reports that the Hall of Fame plans no changes, and that Sports Illustrated calls its list “very subjective,” and says it’ll consider the cousins for future lists. The story also talks about the controversy over the Penobscot request that the Cleveland Indians stop using the mascot Chief Wahoo.

Meanwhile, honoring the Sockalexis cousins is nothing new for the Penobscot. They just wish the rest of world – especially the sports world – would, too. “It’s all part of honoring our ancestors, and making sure they get the respect they are due,” Chief Kirk Francis tells the Globe.

Wonder how long that’ll take?

Gwen Florio

The brunch is going to have to stretch over the entire weekend because I’m headed for the National Folk Festival in Butte, America, as soon as I’m done typing. Given how I overindulged last weekend at the Arlee Celebration, I’m going to make a mighty attempt to stay away from the food vendors. But here are some tasty virtual dishes: