The Great Gathering: Lakota Basketball as a Site of Cultural Production

Abstract:The Lakota Nation Invitational (LNI) is the premier basketball tournament in the State of South Dakota and for the Lakota. Over the forty-four years it has been played, the tournament has evolved to create a major cultural festival/competition as well. The combination of sport and cultural festival has resulted in the Lakota Nation Invitational being a site of cultural production. Hobsbawm’s use of “invented tradition” is useful in examining the way that Lakota culture is reproduced and altered in this setting, but it requires alterations when used in an indigenous context. For Hobsbawm and other proponents of invented tradition, the newly minted rituals are privileged over tradition, but indigenous societies make the two co-equals. The LNI is unique in the way it promotes sport, indigenous perspective, and cultural production.