Girls in Basketball Texts: Representation, Resiliency, and Writing Elizabeth Dinkins, Bellarmine University
2014 NCTE Conference
Rez Ball is wide-open. Beautiful. Disciplined, but disciplined by Mother Nature’s rules and not by man’s structure,
which makes it a war of attrition. There is an innate flow and beauty to it—high risk maneuvers, long passes, three
pointers galore and, to be honest, not quite as much defense. But it’s beautiful. And natural. Colors of the wind,
anyone? So there’s conventional basketball … then there’s Shoni. -Gyasi Ross, “Woman Crush Wednesday: Shoni Schimmel & Catching a Shadow”
Sample Guiding Questions for Inquiry:
In what ways does basketball reflect and represent American Indian cultures and histories?
How have native peoples made basketball a game of their own?
What is the legacy of Native women in basketball?
How have women been formative in shaping these legacies of women’s basketball and American Indian athletes?
How can writing (in a form of your choice) capture the role of women in basketball culture?
Sample Writing Forms and Purposes:
Academic paper (cultural synthesis, comparison, and/or critique)
Journalistic reports (blogs, podcasts, infographics, news stories)
Poetry & literary nonfiction
Resources/Mentor Texts
Film Poetry/Prose/Fiction Academic & Literary
Nonfiction
Journalism
Off the Rez (iTunes: Tells the story of
Shoni Schimmel and her
family as they move off the
reservation. Contemporary)
Playing for the World
(Montana PBS: Tells the
story of the Fort Shaw
basketball team who traveled
to the 1904 World’s Fair St.
Louis. Captures the
oppressive reality of Indian
boarding schools & the
beginning of women in the
legacy of native basketball
culture & history.)
Natalie Diaz (an ex-collegiate
& professional basketball
player turned poet)
“Top Ten Reasons Why
Indians Are Good at
Basketball”
“How to Love a Woman
with No Legs”
Sports Blog Series http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/blog/runngun “Why We Play Basketball”
by Sherman Alexie(College English, 1995, vol. 58, no. 6)
Hoop Queens by Charles R.
Smith (collection of poetry
about women basketball
players)
How Boarding School Basketball became Indian Basketball by Wade Davies, (chpt. 27
in American Indians &
Popular Culture: Media,
Sports, and Politics (2012)
Edited by Elizabeth Delaney
Hoffman)
Counting Coup: A True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn By Larry Colton (2000)
A Season on the Reservation: My Sojourn with the White Mountain Apaches By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar &
Stephen Singular (2000)
Celebrating Rez Ball
by Gary Every
http://www.copperarea.com/
pages/celebrating-rez-ball/
10 Reasons You Might be a
Rez Baller
by Vincent Shilling
http://indiancountrytodayme
dianetwork.com/2014/07/17/
10-ways-tell-you-might-be-
rezballer-155868
Woman Crush Wednesday:
Shoni Schimmel & Catching
a Shadow (Rez Ball Jim
Thorpe)
By Gyasi Ross
http://indiancountrytodayme
dianetwork.com/2014/06/18/
woman-crush-wednesday-
shoni-schimmel-and-
catching-shadow-rez-ball-jim-
thorpe-155358
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