Bronson Koenig shares his thoughts on role models, Standing Rock

[milestogo]

Even after two Final Four runs, Wisconsin basketball star Bronson Koenig said he didn't think of himself as a role model when he took a September trip to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota. The realization hit him after a basketball clinic at Standing Rock High School when kids asked him if he had any Native American role models growing up. "It’s not that they didn’t exist, but just that they weren’t on my radar," he wrote in an essay published Thursday. "They weren’t celebrated in popular culture." It was a transformational moment. "I knew that if I could be someone who even one kid from Standing Rock looked up to, I’d be prouder of that than of anything I had ever done — or might ever do — on the basketball court," he wrote.

Koenig shared his thoughts on the protests at Standing Rock, in which he took part last summer, in a lengthy piece in The Players' Tribune. According to Koenig, he's one of about 60 Native American students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and one of only about 40 Native American Division I men’s college basketball players in the country. And he's spent a lot of time lately thinking about his heritage.

Koenig spent two days at the North Dakota protest site in September with thousands of Native Americans from across the nation and numerous environmental activists who oppose the project: a 1,172-mile oil pipeline from North Dakota to Illinois. Energy Transfer Partners, a Texas-based pipeline company, has met fierce resistance to its plan to run the line underneath the Missouri River — a half-mile from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation — which protesters say threatens drinking water and tribal lands.

Koenig, whose father is white and whose mother is Ho Chunk, traveled to the protest site with his brother Miles and trainer Clint Park to run a basketball clinic. "As a college basketball player, I felt that it was the best way I could show my support for the protests," Koenig writes. "One of the greatest things about the game is that wherever you go, you can ball. On reservations, there’s almost always a game of 'rez ball' happening." And it was happening at Standing Rock, on a dirt field with a well-used rim. Koenig held an unofficial clinic there with about 50 kids.

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/city-life/bronson-koenig-shares-his-thoughts-on-role-models-standing-rock/article_3f24185e-d221-57d8-b8de-46189cd0cdec.html

[dhill926]

1. good kid....