It has taken extra time to conclude my thoughts on our trip to the Lakota Nation Invitational because as soon as I was back I realized the trip, for me, was not about basketball. There is a story to tell about the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation that has not been told clearly enough or loudly enough to date, and I keep looking for ways around the rupture of the post-colonial barricade that separates my own writing voice from telling that story. I guess I thought Ezra's camera could be the vehicle, arrogantly ignoring the fact that Ezra's camera belonged to Ezra, and to his own story of blood, land, and ancestry...

We left in a snowstorm on a Friday morning before the semifinals had even taken place. I felt regret that I had not spent more time with Travis and Clovia, but was pleased with the time I got with the two Lyle Noisy Hawks. I was impatient with Ezra and slightly melancholy when we left, thinking we should have shot much more footage and that the story was there in front of us, even if it had been invisible through the viewfinder.

In the end Louie Krogman scored 40 points nearly every time he played, but his class B White River Tigers could not keep up with Red Cloud's relentless pressure and running, and their tired legs failed them.

If I had to pick an All-Tournament Team it would be: Louie Krogman (White River) G, Bryce Hornbeck (Little Wound) G, Kenny Franks (Red Cloud) G, Jordan His Law (Todd County) F, and Wil Edwards (Lower Brule) F.

Ezra and I had spoken at length on the subject of why very few Native American players ever make it as far as Division I NCAA programs. Coach Mitch, my friend and a tireless scout, had matter of factly stated that only physical prodigies can make it out of rural places because the competition is never enough. What happens when every time Krogman pulls up, someone four inches taller, two steps quicker, and more adept at jumping is right there in front of him, not to mention the fact that should he slide by his opponent he'd be greeted by men nearly a foot taller than he is. That is what it's like everyday in Chicago.

Still, it seems remarkable that a player who scores 40 points every time he plays, who breaks a 50-year old record, who plays as well against Indians as against farm boys, will not be successful. The story of the Native Ballers is much more complicated.

We spoke of Jess Heart, the last greatest Rez Ball legend. He made it through one semester at Division II powerhouse North Platte before fading back into the Badlands, booze, and local stardom available to him at home. His body was perfect for Division I basketball and he had the unconscious confidence that makes scorers great. Still, most people were not surprised at his failure to make good on his talent. Alcohol ran through his family bloodline in generous proportions, he had never spent a day on the books, and he did not have the toughness of a true competitor, something Coach Mitch and his colleagues look for.

The truth is that very few people ever make it off the Rez under any circumstances, and when they do, they disappear into a White World as an unidentifiable and insignificant minority, saddles with the Brown Man's Burden but without having been trained for it.

"Is their deal that the full-bloods don't want to assimilate?" Ez asked me. "If so, what's the story? They don't have to."

The morning after that question was posed we were standing on the frozen hill at Wounded Knee alone, looking out over the icy prairie at the blue, yellow, and red public housing structures in Wounded Knee village and I was trying to think how to get across what I felt to someone who was seeing it all for the first time.

On the way out we came to the bottom of the hill. We could turn right and go down to Pine Ridge and I could show Ez the rural ghetto, the tribal government offices, the depressing sight of White Clay, the Nebraska border town so well portrayed in the film Skins. Then we could ride for two hours for the beautiful country of Custer National Park, land that had originally been part of the Rez and later taken away like everything else. The irony of the name does not come with humor, but like a poisoned thorn, was intended to inflict as much hurt as possible.

Or we could turn left and get to Rapid in time to catch the first two games of the day. I left it up to Ezra. It was his camera. His story.

It was mine too. I just couldn't figure out how to connect the dots at that moment so I left it to him and we went to Rapid. And for the rest of the trip I watched the kids play their games, watched the Natives move around Rapid from the Civic Center, to the bars, to the mall, to their hotels. For a weekend they are welcome there, in White America, or at least tolerated. I found myself disgusted at the drunks who took the opportunity to push their agenda with impunity, and realized why the White Prairie Bourgeois of Rapid City despises the Natives so much. They live right there with all that guilt on the rest of our behalf. The mix-bloods are born bathing in it, drinking it in.

A friend wrote me after I'd returned that she hoped it wasn't all sad. And I felt ashamed that I had come across that way. It's not sad. There is a war still raging. The right side can still win. The moment is bleak like winter, like being surrounded by the enemy, like watching a child die before its parent, like losing your mother. But there is still shelter from the storm.

I though of Trevor, Teal, Ryan, Alyssa, Samuel, Sierra. The youngest generation there. Maybe they will strip ash saplings with their father and stretch them into a sweat lodge and learn the old songs their grandfather taught so many of us. And maybe they will find a way through for all of us. They do not want to be separate. Nor do they want to lose their culture. They don't even know that yet. They want to be Lakota and live a good life.

I think that until the country is willing to tell their story. Until people like me can find a way to tell it. That we won't ever face our guilt, will never forgive ourselves, and will keep them there on the Rez, invisible like ghosts, until the ghost dancers can sing the world opposite and upside down.

This cannot merely be the bleeding heart rant of White Guilt, but must be, at last, a treaty of the spirit between Americans and Natives, sealed in friendship, by confession, and made real in the joint effort to preserve their language now and forever.

Hecetu Welo