Joseph B. Oxendine

Joseph B. Oxendine decided to write this book after conducting a workshop on sports and recreation at the Pine Ridge Reservation. He found that many young people at Pine Ridge, despite “evidence of substantial athletic skill,” had no ambition to compete in college, professional or more advanced amateur sports.

While this book itself, because of its lengthy and academic nature, may not appeal to the general teenaged audience, it does provide history, context and perhaps inspiration for people who work with young Indian athletes. Where it falls short, though, is in the presentation of Indian athletes who have faced the difficulties of straddling two cultures. This is perhaps due to the author’s clear focus on the positive; I don’t know. However, I believe that young people who are struggling to sort out their abilities, identities and dreams would be well served by a deeper discussion of how past (and present) athletes have negotiated the trials and pitfalls of success off of the reservation.

Oxendine is an educator in the fields of motor learning and sports psychology, a Lumbee Indian and a former professional baseball player. In "American Indian Sports Heritage" he attempts to answer several questions:

"How would one describe the emphasis of sports and games in the traditional life of American Indians? How prominent were their sports historically, what forms did they take and what was the societal context of these activities? Further, how widespread were the games and how similar were the meanings attached to sports among different Indian communities? In more recent times, how has the Indian responded to modern, mainstream sport? What caused the Indian’s diminishing visibility in those sports following the heyday of the early 20th century?" (xi)

In addition, American Indian Sports Heritage provides brief biographies of prominent Indian athletes both prior to 1930 and after 1930 and lists inductees into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame (1972-1985). It includes references; for my edition (1995) Oxendine has written a new afterword that addresses the issue of Indian mascots for sports teams.

The first 150 pages or so are devoted to a survey of American Indian sport prior to or during the early period of contact with Europeans. Here we begin to understand just how intrinsic sport was to the Indian view of the cosmos and his place within it. Healing, fertility, success in battle, bringing rainfall, honoring the dead, finding favor with the gods—these were the goals of, in particular, ball games like lacrosse. Spiritual forces were called upon in preparation for the games, and supernatural forces were assumed to play a part in the outcome of games as well. This is, of course, different than the contemporary European view; there are other significant differences well.

For example, Indians traditionally were not concerned with the standardization of rules, of the duration of the games, the sizes or nature of playing fields, the number of players, etc.; neither were they interested in quantifying the achievements or exploits of individual athletes. These were not relevant to the purposes of the games. Moreover, all the players—not only judges and referees—“assumed responsibility for fair play”; injuries or other incidents that happened during the course of the game were attributed to luck or to supernatural forces, and “losing one’s composure [in the face of these circumstances] would lead to scorn and ridicule...despite the ruggedness of the activity or the stress placed upon the performers, self-discipline with fair play and dignity were expected at all times.” (18)

Oxendine discusses other facets of sport that were unique to or emphasized within Indian cultures; for example, the distinction between guile or trickery (which were allowed) and dishonesty (which wasn’t), and the significance of art in sport. He briefly touches upon differences between men’s and girl’s sports, suggesting that in some cases girls’ sports may have had even closer ties to the spiritual than men’s, although cited evidence is very limited. (I say girls’ sports, because grown married women seem not to have participated as players.)

One fascinating statement involves the relative importance of team sports in Indian vs. European cultures. Oxendine writes that “[Indians’] most important sports were team games...[while] most sports brought to this country by the Europeans were individual sports. Although new arrivals in this country developed team sports such as football, baseball and basketball during the 19th century, it seems fair to assume that non-Indians learned the importance and strategy of team play from Indians.” (26) I wonder how much the supposed European emphasis on individual sports is related to class rather than ethnicity; did the gentlemanly class tend to nurture individual skill while team sports still ruled in more traditional European settings—say, among rural villages--during the colonial period? I wish I knew more about this topic!

In any case, Oxendine meaningfully expands on the importance and meaning of “teamwork” for Indians, explaining that “members of traditional Indian teams were expected to develop a broad range of skills and to perform a variety of roles as needed…after developing adequate competence in an activity, he or she went on to other skills…overpractice [of one skill] would be detrimental to other skills needing development.” (27-8) This may also partially explain the relative lack of emphasis on individual virtuosity.

Oxendine discusses betting on games, a widespread Indian practice that served to heighten interest and involvement in the games, and to distribute material goods throughout a community. That European colonists disapproved so heartily of this practice is just another measure of how mismatched these societies were.

Rounding out Part I of the book are chapters describing particular games of skill—ball games (lacrosse, shinny, double ball and others), foot-racing, archery, swimming, snow snake, hoop-and-pole, and children’s games—as well as games of chance such as the moccasin game, which were also very significant in American Indian culture. He does not address how these games of chance may have evolved over the centuries of colonization, however, but focuses instead on games of skill.

Continually hinted at but never fully addressed is the exchange that must have taken place between Indians and settlers. A particularly interesting study would be to uncover how and why lacrosse came to be so popular among the European immigrants to this continent. That, of course, is a topic unto itself, which has likely been addressed elsewhere. Interesting to me as a hockey fan, though, is the fact that apparently “the Montreal Canada Club, founded in 1839, established the first standard rules [of lacrosse] in 1867” (48)—at nearly the same historical moment that ice hockey rules were standardized for the first time, also in Montreal. That this process of standardization was happening with other team sports around the same time, might, again, point to factors other than (though linked to) ethnicity that may have driven this process, and driven the very popularity of these team sports: the will to modernize, for example; to rationalize, and, not least, to create entertainment for the masses in a capitalist context.

In Part II, “The Emergence of Indians in Modern Sport”, Oxendine discusses white-run Indian education including the boarding and residential schools. Much of this, although it’s far from the first time I’ve encountered it, is still nearly too painful to read about.

I can’t help but include this quote, though, of a letter from the Chief of Six Nations to Ben Franklin, which, again, shows not only the differences between American Indian and European culture, but also the wisdom and prescient multicultural perspective of this particular Indian Chief: “...different nations have different conceptions of things...several of our young people were formally brought up at the colleges of the Northern provinces...when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for warrior, hunters or counselors; they were totally good for nothing.” (169) What did Ben Franklin have to say in reply? I would like to know!

Oxendine has a fairly rosy view of the famous Carlisle and Haskell Indian schools—perhaps understandable given his association with the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, which began as a school for Indians. Certainly, although these schools did wrench Indian children from their homes, families and cultures, they did, for a few short years, provide a platform and to some extent a support system, for outstanding Indian athletes to shine in a white man’s world. However, once the platform was removed, Indian participation in college-level, amateur and professional sport immediately declined. In Part III, “Recent Developments” Oxendine acknowledges this, and tries to address the problems facing Indian athletes.

But as I stated above, Oxendine fails to fully consider the implications of participation on the national/international stage for individual Indian athletes. Although his biographies of prominent Indian athletes are numerous and very impressive, they are limited to athletic accomplishments and rarely mention the athletes’ post-sport occupations or personal lives. In biographies of Indian athletes that I’ve read elsewhere I have noticed a theme of dislocation, of difficulty in negotiating the two cultures that they must straddle. Though he touches on this theme in a quote or two from current Indian athletes, Oxendine does not develop it to any degree. Nor does he address in any depth other factors that might be causes of the lack of “ambition to compete in college, professional or more advanced amateur sports” that he noted at Pine Ridge.

From my point of view, then, the most interesting aspects of the book are those that draw distinctions between Indian and European views of sport. While in the Indian view, sports and physical activities are a means by which human beings can interact with the natural world, engage with the spiritual and participate in and serve the interests of his or her community, in the modern European view its purposes are quite different: development of physical strength and skill, emphasis on individual talent, and on winning as the object.

What, then, are the advantages for the Indian of participating in modern European sport? Are there ways in which Indian athletes can willfully combine multi-ethnic “purposes” of sport and find ways to participate on their own terms? These are questions that each individual must explore for him/herself. And while it isn’t possible to fully recapture the folkways described in this book, knowledge of them might inspire or suggest new ways to bring spiritual and community interests back into sport—even in a modern context.… (mer)