‘We play for Indian Country’: how Bilingual Basketball league is preserving Indigenous languages

Long before Michael Jordan changed the sport of basketball, another Jordon transformed the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) history by breaking the league’s racial barrier as its first Native American player.

In 1956, Phil “The Flash” Jordon, a descendant of the Wailaki and Nomlaki tribes, was drafted by the New York Knicks and played 10 seasons in the league. Though he may not carry the same cultural cache as other hoopers throughout professional basketball’s century-plus existence, Jordon embodies a longstanding Native American fixation on the sport – especially at the community level. Throughout the years, Native Americans have embraced basketball and made it their own. One way they’re doing so today is with “rez ball,” a lightning-fast style of basketball associated with Native American teams.

Although the notion of Native Americans in basketball hasn’t fully permeated the mainstream sports consciousness (basketball gyms on reservations are still among the most overlooked in the country by talent scouts), the NBA, Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and other basketball entities have begun to acknowledge native hoopers and their rich legacy more fully.

Rez Ball, a LeBron James-produced film currently streaming on Netflix, is based on Canyon Dreams, an acclaimed book about a Navajo high school team in northern Arizona. The Toronto Raptors unveiled an alternate team logo designed by Native American artist Luke Swinson in honor of the franchise’s annual Indigenous Heritage Day; the illustration depicts two long haired, brown skinned hoopers flowing inside of a basketball silhouette, which doubles as an amber sunrise. And earlier this season, NBA superstar Kyrie Irving – whose family belongs to the Lakota tribe of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota – went viral for meeting with a group of Native American fans after a Dallas Mavericks game. The eight-time All-Star also debuted Chief Hélà, his pair of indigenous-inspired sneakers, during the 2024 NBA Finals last June.

Participants train at the Bilingual Basketball camp in July 2024. Photograph: Marcos Romero Turner

As for the WNBA, the league boasts the only professional sports franchise owned by a Native American tribe. The Mohegan Tribe purchased the Connecticut Sun (formerly the Orlando Miracle) in 2003 and relocated the team to the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut.

Still, there’s much left to be desired for Native American representation and their conservation of traditions and identity at large, both on and off the court. It’s something Native basketball players and coaches are hustling to retain and defend.

“Imagine not being able to speak your language, that’s having your identity stolen,” says Adam Strom, a member of the Yakama tribe in Washington state. “I’m not fluent in Ichiskíin, [a Yakama dialect]. I only know a few words. But there’s a big push in Indian Country to preserve and hold on to your language. Basketball is a conduit for that.”

For Strom and others invested in the Native American basketball community, the sport offers a chance to celebrate Native American history, retain indigenous languages and provide an inviting, accessible space for intergenerational exchange.

Strom is the head coach of the women’s basketball team at Haskell Indian Nations University – the only Native American institution in the country that offers a sanctioned four-year athletic program for Native Americans, and which Strom compares to an HBCU equivalent for indigenous students. For that reason, it’s unlike any other campus in the nation.

But Strom’s role – along with various staff positions at Haskell – have come under fire by the Trump administration’s budget cuts. The recent executive order has put the Native American institution directly at risk. After slashing tribal funds and attempting to revoke Native American birthright – a draconian move which a federal judge has deemed as “unconstitutional” – it’s an especially precarious moment for Haskell and its students. That hasn’t stopped Strom or his basketball program from trying to instill a winning mindset imbued with cultural awareness in the next generation of Native American community members. Despite formally losing his job, Strom – a 24-year veteran and son of the late basketball coach, Ted Strom – is leveraging his basketball prowess to proverbially level the playing field. Or, in his case, the hardwood court.

“At Haskell, we play for Indian Country,” Strom says, who is now working without pay as a volunteer due to Trump’s unprecedented firings. “Any time my players step on the court, they represent Native Americans throughout the United States. My recruiting pool is a sliver compared to those other universities we participate against. Players have to meet that bloodline. There’s a lot of pride in that.”

Adam Strom trains with a basketball camp participant in Hoyt, Kansas. Photograph: Marcos Romero Turner

According to the NCAA, only 544 student athletes out of 520,000 are Native Americans competing in Division I sports. As the least represented ethnic group in all of college sports, it speaks volumes that Native American women account for roughly 19% of all Natives in Division I competition. Players such as Jude and Shoni Schimmel, two Indigenous sisters who were raised on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, are examples. The sisters went on to have successful careers at the University of Louisville, with Shoni becoming an All-American first-round draft pick of the Atlanta Dream in 2014.

In a New York Times article about the Schimmels, Jude referenced basketball as “‘medicine’ that ‘helps and heals’ Native Americans”. Shoni (who pleaded guilty to abusing her domestic partner in 2023) has since retired from the WNBA, while Jude, after playing overseas in Spain, is currently signed to Athletes Unlimited Pro Basketball.

More than any institutional accolades or professional achievements, though, the Native American spirit for basketball is most visible at the grassroots level, where significant assists are being made to carry forth a vibrant legacy. For basketballers in Indian Country, it’s a way to stay interconnected by passing generational knowledge on to the next player.

“Without language you lose culture; without culture you lose your people. Kids from this community, their great-great-great-grandparents spoke [indigenous] languages. So how do you count, pass, catch, run in that language?” says Mitch Thompson, co-founder of Bilingual Basketball and an assistant coach with the Seattle Storm.

The program is designed to support marginalized communities by providing free basketball camps that utilize bilingualism and sociolinguistics as part of their core mission to reclaim historically overlooked spaces through basketball.

Thompson, a basketball coach with experience working for NBA and WNBA organizations in the United States and Mexico, is a passionate advocate for social equity and cultural empowerment through the sport. Having grown up in northeastern Oregon, Thompson became familiar with rez ball through the nearby Yakama, Cayuse, Walla Walla and Umatilla reservations.

Participants in the December 2024 Bilingual Basketball camp. Photograph: Marcos Romero Turner

“Adam and I worked closely with the Yakama language department. I believe it was the first ever basketball camp offered in Ichiskíin,” says Thompson. “There are only around 100 conversational speakers of this language on earth. Everything needs to be approved by tribal elders. But if you can combine that identity and those nuanced cultural aspects with basketball, that’s powerful.”

The weekend-long camp mixed English with Ichiskíin. The program offered indigenous prayers, a “basketball powwow” (dances and songs used to pass down Native American traditions), and dribbling routines led by ceremonial drummers. It may be the first and only basketball camp of its kind, according to Thompson, who has extensive experience working with non-traditional basketball communities around North America.

“This is culturally sensitive. These communities had boarding schools and the kids were stolen from their families and forced into spaces where only English was spoken,” says Thompson. “They had to practice Christianity [and] cut their hair. This is the opposite of that. We’re celebrating language. This is a healing process.”

Bilingual Basketball followed up their Yakama camp by working with the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation (PBPNO) in Kansas – a tribe with even higher linguistic preservation needs. In 2019, the PBPN language and cultural department coordinator, Dawn LeClere, declared the Potawatomi language as nearly extinct, with only five known fluent speakers, a dwindling fraction of the estimated 10,000 that once flourished in the 1700s.

Language preservation – outside of basketball – is a lifeline for North American tribes. To be sure, translating modern basketball jargon into an ancient language that isn’t fluently spoken isn’t easy. It requires tremendous creativity, and the phrases often don’t match on a 1:1 basis.

A young participant of the Bilingual Basketball camp. Photograph: Marcos Romero Turner

There is no word in Ichiskíin for “basketball,” for example, so professional linguists and community members teamed up to invent a literal translation that combines the native words for basket and ball. For participants and coaches alike, it’s all a new experience.

“We have learned so much working with the Yakama and Potawatomi nations,” says Romero, one of the program’s co-founders and directors. “The involvement from the language programs has been huge by providing translation of basketball terminology and everyday phrases. There have also been many volunteers to help teach the language throughout the duration of the camp. The kids got a chance to enhance their language skills and also learn cheers and cultural dances like Native American hoop dance.”

As a bilingual speaker in English and Spanish, Romero learned new phrases including “kgiwigesēm” (“you all did good”) and “tuctu” (“let’s go”). If you try Googling those words, nothing appears. And that’s exactly the kind of gap that Strom and Bilingual Basketball are trying to bridge – rather than destroy – with basketball as their tool. While these native communities face persecution in other arenas outside of basketball, the 134-year-old recreational sport has offered an unlikely pathway towards cultural preservation. It’s something that Strom and the founders of Bilingual Basketball are committed to passing forward in real time.

“There’s a sense of amnesia in American culture that [Indigenous] communities and people don’t exist anymore. They absolutely do,” says Thompson. “Their language and culture has persevered through genocide, boarding schools, and other intentional ways to keep them impoverished. Most Americans don’t have any real, interpersonal connection to tribal communities. Really connecting to the communities, going into the spaces. But they’re still there. It’s important for non-Indigenous Americans to realize it’s not just something of the past.”