UW Badger forward Bronson Koenig is a proud and outspoken member of the Ho Chunk Nation, and a player in “college basketball’s most political locker room.” So it was no surprise when he visited the encampment of protesters at Standing Rock in North Dakota, where thousands of people stand in the way of the Dakota Access Pipeline’s progress across land occupied by indigenous people.
His account of the visit, published today in The Players Tribune, isn’t quite so expected. It’s worth a read … if you have a tissue handy.
Koenig recounts playing pickup basketball on a dirt court with some kids. “I’d never played basketball surrounded by police and blockades,” he writes. And during a Q&A session after an indoor basketball clinic, he recounts, someone asked whether he’d had any Native American role models:
Looking out at the sea of kids — all their eyes on me — I thought about the terrible statistics that you see in the news about life on reservations. The drug abuse, the depression, the malnutrition, the suicide rates that are tragically high, above national averages.
I felt my voice crack. I knew in my heart that I needed to say something, even if it wasn’t what sounded “good.”
No, I didn’t grow up with any Native American role models, I said.
It’s not that they didn’t exist, but just that they weren’t on my radar. They weren’t celebrated in popular culture.
It was a moment that moved me more than I expected. I hadn’t come to Standing Rock to be a “role model.” But I had come to help. I knew that if I could be someone who even one kid from Standing Rock looked up to, I’d be prouder of that than of anything I had ever done — or might ever do — on the basketball court.
Koenig further reflects on growing up Native American among mostly white classmates, being one of only about 60 Native American students on the massive UW campus, and the clashes between police and protesters.
Koenig is a senior who will certainly emerge as an NBA talent in the coming months. Seems he might emerge as a solid social justice advocate, too.
