Two blocks to the east of the Store sits Arlee Schools, a series of one-story buildings spread between fields and basketball courts where kids study from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Many of the buildings are modest, built with asbestos decades ago. But one structure catches the eye first: a $3 million gymnasium with a peaked roof rising into the sky. The gym has retractable baskets that descend from the walls with a push of a button and a high-performance floor that refracts the light pouring through tall windows. You can look down and see your reflection.
One of the themes explored in the book is the depressive economic state of Native American reservations, especially their schools. And at first, this quote seems as though it is going to be an exploration of that undeniable truth. The reference to asbestos—the removal of which was eventually (and amazingly) regulated by the government in order to stop another generation from growing up exposed to cancer-causing material—indicates the advanced age of these buildings. But then comes the kicker. Three million dollars for a state-of-the-art gym. Proof enough it really doesn’t matter what the situation is, if you can produce a successful athletics program at an educational institution in America, you can at least change the circumstances of that part of the school.
In 2016, Montana had the nation’s highest suicide rate. Native youth were by far its most vulnerable demographic.
This is not just a story about a successful basketball team seeking the pull off the difficult task of repeating as champions. There is an undercurrent to the story that begins as backstory and soon rises to the level almost of a concurrent narrative thread. It is more than a mere subplot because it is inextricably tied to the sports story. The knowledge of the prevalence of suicide on the reservations in Montana is not the shocking news that it would be to the rest of the country. Almost everyone there has been touched personally by it, including members of the team. In America, few social institutions are quite as useful for bringing attention to a subject quite like sports. And, of course, a championship-caliber team is able to brig much more attention than one whose players are sitting at home during the playoffs.
At a lower level in the state’s athletic hierarchy sit Montana State University Billings, a Division II school, and six programs that compete in the Frontier Conference of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, or NAIA. In 2017–18, those seven schools’ men’s basketball programs’ rosters listed twenty coaches, recruiting coordinators, operations managers, and graduate assistants. Not one hailed from a reservation.
Another important theme explored in the story is not as surprising as the sudden introduction of rampant suicide on the reservation but may possibly be more surprising overall. It is no secret that one of the few paths toward ridiculously out-of-sync wealth available to underprivileged minorities in America is athletics. High school sports brings in extraordinary amounts of money to schools that the athletes themselves rarely see, but that absence is made up for by the extension of opportunities to attend college all paid for and without any real expectations of academic excellence. And, indeed, that system has been working out well for millions of poor minority kids who would otherwise have no chance. But for some reason, while it is a flawlessly executed system off outside the reservation, it breaks down almost completely inside them. Just how inefficient is the system? Jim Thorpe—who was born just a year after the telephone was patented—still remains the only Native American athlete most people can name. And even he is nowhere near as famous as he used to be.
