A home for all our memories, with many more to be made.
The way I heard it, this all started in a hot tub in Rapid City, South Dakota near the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. Or maybe even before that, when a medicine man from that same area visited Jackson, Wyoming and started drumming up ideas (no pun intended), sharing his visions, and making connections with some of the local, outdoorsy flavor — and by local, outdoorsy flavor, I mean ski bums. This is how these things begin, when good people, with good intentions and strong spirits, find themselves together in a hot tub at the edge of the rez, sharing their dreams of the future.
In this dream they wanted to do something for the kids, to introduce them to the mountains, to skiing and snowboarding. And that is where the InterTribal Winter Sports Summit or IWSS came to life. The vision of the IWSS event is to get native youth from surrounding reservations into the mountains to learn to ski and snowboard. But of course there is more to it than that: this vision sees the value of sharing both cultures, which means the elders, the dancers, the storytellers, the artists, and the singers are coming, too. IWSS is about making connections and cross-cultural exchange through conversation, ceremony, dance, and of course skiing and snowboarding.
The only real problem I have seen, is the people who generally find themselves in a hot tub in Rapid City, coming up with heartfelt ideas concerning youth, culture, and a better world are rarely the ones with the money to make it happen. I suppose that is where community efforts come in, where good people with good intentions and limited financial resources can help get the word out about an event that seeks to do a little good in the world, for people, for the mountains, for culture.
As skiers, snowboarders, climbers, trail runners, mountain people, we spend a lot of our time connected directly to the natural world. We have a deep passion for the mountains we call home, and with that passion comes a respect for the history, and for the original inhabitants who at one time lived and thrived in these wild places. They hunted, danced, played, fought, and died here; singing songs, holding ceremonies, and living as free as perhaps any people on this earth ever have. When we find ourselves fully in the moment, on a sunny powder day, laughing with members of our own mountain tribe, hooting and hollering through the forests, I think for brief moments we are experiencing the freedom these mountains once provided the native peoples. That kind of freedom is contagious and is always looking to be shared. We share it at après when we tell our stories of the day, in video and art, with our family and friends back home who may never quite understand what we are talking about. That is really the essence of this event, to share a little of the fun and freedom we have found as skiers and snowboarders, with our neighbors, who in turn might share a little of their culture with us, tell us stories of place, sing, teach us to dance, and share their visions of the future. Our hope is that we might learn something from each other, to heal a troubled history, to practice tolerance and acceptance, to make new friends, and to learn once again to respect and care for the earth as the beautiful home that it is.
So where and when is this going down? This event kicks off with a final fundraising party on Saturday, March 21, an equinox party if you will. Then our native neighbors arrive on Wednesday, March 25 in Jackson, Wyoming where we will spread them throughout the community to stay with participating host families. The next few days will be filled with skiing and snowboarding, mountain tours, sleigh rides, snow study courses, hot spring visits, cultural exchanges, and dinners with a whole lot of fun and laughter. The culminating event will be a compilation of performances by the Wind River dancers, drummers, and singers while we share the stage and tell each other stories and our hopes for the future.
And who are we? We are skiers and snowboarders, mountain people, with good hearts, and strong spirits who seek to build a bridge from the past, to the present, and into a brighter future so that our children can continue to ride together for many generations to come.
Author’s Note: Some of the kids participating are from the American Horse School at Pine Ridge, who had recently been taken out to a hockey game to celebrate their academic achievements and stellar behavior; however, they in turn had beer and racial slurs thrown on them by people who were sittingabove them. Bernice King (Martin Luther King, Jr.’s daughter) penned a wonderful open letter to those kids at about the same time we were sitting down to write our words to share with you through Inertia. Read her words alongside ours, and help us help these kids have a good time in the mountains, while we practice forgiveness and tolerance, by having a damn good time.
For more information on the Intertribal Winter Sports Summit, please visit their website. And to donate, head on over to the GoFundMe page.
