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.

Dear Setanta Claus, Please let me see my Gunners on Boxing Day... It's been an important week at the Emirates, beginning with the 1-0 victory eked out against an undermanned Chelsea. I caught the game at the Globe Pub with my friend Gerry. Upon entering Chicago's cathedral of televised football, I realized the front room was full of Chelsea skinheads and my pre-match jitters turned were lent gravity from my fight or flight instinct. I walked towards the backroom where the Arsenal supporters had gathered but just before I reached the safe haven I traded stares with a particularly ugly Chelsea supporter whose neck had been tattooed with a dashed line labeled "cut here." Cute. Fuck Chelsea! Sorry Trasker...

Last year about this time I wrote a blog called Gathering of the Tribes , during which I reflected on the significance of the Lakota Nation Invitational, an all-Indian basketball tournament held each year in Rapid City, SD. This year, right now, I'm in a coffee shop in Rapid City having traveled out here with my childhood friend Ezra Edelman to reconnoiter the tournament as a possible documentary film subject. 

This Lakota inipi song was recorded live at Zebulon in Brooklyn in November when I opened for Dylan Goodrich's band Animal Forest. I learned the song at Ed Young Man Afraid of His Horse's sweat lodge near Kyle, SD. I later learned the song better at Uncle John Around Him 's sweat lodge, mostly listening to his son Jon Jon, and my friends Travis Brave Bird and Lyle Noisy Hawk Jr. All of the people I mentioned sing the song better than I do, but these songs are really about each of us tapping into the voice with which we cry towards the heavens in joy and despair, and everyone does that equally good.