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Amelia Schafer
ICT + Rapid City Journal
RAPID CITY, S.D. – In the 47 years since the Lakota Nation Invitational (LNI) was first created, the program has seen a lot of different changes and developments. For the 2023 competition, the tournament has added skateboarding and oral interpretation to the expansive roster of events happening inside The Monument from Tuesday-Saturday, Dec. 12-16.
Oral interpretation is a speech event that involves performing literature aloud to an audience to communicate meaning. The four offered at LNI are poetry, Reader’s Theater, original oratory and storytelling. Each school may register up to two individuals in poetry, original oratory and storytelling. Schools may also have one contestant on standby during each event. Only one Reader’s Theater per school will be allowed.
The oral interpretation competition begins Tuesday, Dec. 12, at 8 a.m. in room 206.
The skateboarding competition begins at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 13, inside the Monument in Rushmore Room 3-4. Participants can sign up starting at 10 a.m. Wednesday. This competition is open to all youth from participating schools, elementary through high school, with written parent permission and waivers. The competition is presented by Pine Ridge’s Ground Control, a group that aims to encourage youth art and hobbies including skateboarding.
It’s not uncommon for the tournament to adopt new competitions and events. It has always been about adapting to changes and coming up with new, creative solutions to community needs, founder and director Bryan Brewer, Oglala Lakota, said.
The tournament started in 1976 as a way to adapt to change. That year, Brewer had to find a new way to get Pine Ridge teams some playtime.
Brewer said no teams were comfortable playing against Pine Ridge. Racism and fear surrounding the American Indian Movement prevented many schools, even Native schools, from allowing their teams to face off against Pine Ridge teams. Brewer had to get creative. He decided to branch out and create a multi-nation sporting event.
Brewer called the coaches of teams from the Omaha Nation and the Kansas-based Kickapoo Nation and invited them to participate in an intertribal basketball tournament. They agreed and LNI was born.
“We decided we would make it always be the Lakota Nation Invitational and we would start to invite other schools,” Brewer said. “It’s the kind of thing where we want there to be some kind of reconciliation between the Indians and non-Indians. This was during the period of reconciliation that Tim Giago and Governor George Mickelson created.”
The competition moved to Rapid City, where Brewer began to invite non-Native schools from Custer, Wall and Rapid City to participate. Cultural elements like traditional handball games and language revitalization competitions were born at the request of community members and participants. The tournament evolved into something the community looked forward to every year.
“We only thought it would go on for a few years until we could get everyone to play games (with us) again, but it became so popular that we kept adding things,” Brewer said. “We added things like wrestling and other sports for everyone. We started a traditional hand game tournament that’s now bigger than the basketball tournament.”
Besides adding new competitions and events, the Lakota Nation Invitational has also had to adapt to problems out of its control.
Hotel prices in Rapid City regularly spike with demand from different events in the city such as the annual He Sapa Wacipi Powwow and LNI. However, in 2022 prices spiked to $2,000 in some Rapid City hotels, causing community members and tournament organizers to voice concerns.
“It’s been like that for years,” Brewer said. “We’ve been working with the city on it, but there’s not much that they can do. They don’t have any control over the hotel and motel associations. They can charge what they want. I think if the city had a say in it they’d help us, but the rooms (prices) get really ridiculous.”
This year, prices have remained consistent with usual rates, anywhere from $100-230 per night depending on the location. Still, Brewer said, many teams chose to stay out of Rapid City for their lodging, opting for lower rates of on average $50-80 per night in Spearfish and Sturgis during the week of LNI. Teams come from all nine tribes in South Dakota, but many also come from surrounding states.
“Many of them can’t afford it. It’s really hard for them to afford a room for that many days,” Brewer said. “Some of them just drive back and forth, mainly those from Pine Ridge, but the teams coming from Eagle Butte, they can’t do that.”
In previous years, teams have been denied seating in restaurants around Rapid City. Brewer said the mayor and council have worked with him to prevent that from happening again and have worked to make participants feel welcome.
“I used to say we’d kind of sneak in and sneak out (of Rapid City), but I remember one day I was driving up to Rapid and I got a phone call. They said, ‘Bryan there’s a sign outside of Rapid that says welcome to Rapid City home of the Lakota Nation Invitational,’” Brewer said. “That was a really big deal to the Indian people driving into Rapid. It made us feel good. It made us feel welcomed.”
This year’s competition begins Tuesday, Dec. 12, and runs until Saturday, Dec. 16. There will be a youth powwow on Friday, Dec. 15, for all youth whether they’re competing or not.
The basketball, wrestling, archery, cheerleading, poetry slam, hand games and knowledge bowl competitions will be streamed online at lni.liveticket.tv for $15 per day or a weekend pass of $45. The public may also come view in-person at The Monument for the same price.
Audio from the events will be live on KILI, KOYA, and KIPI FM-Eagle Butte during the tournament.
A complete schedule of events is listed online at lakotanationinvitational.com/events.
This story is co-published by the Rapid City Journal and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the South Dakota area.
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