Where Wounded Knee Meets Wounded Knees: Skate parks and Native American youth

Abstract

As contemporary peoples, Native Americans exist within multifaceted realities and participate in many everyday popular pleasures. One pleasure prominent in the lives of many young Native Americans is the activities that take place at skate parks. Skate parks have been linked to wellness promotion for both young people and communities and can function as a venue to nurture and mentor Native American youth in ways that parallel traditional methods. Some proponents of skate parks use the popularity of skateboards and skating to link past and present in ways that teach history and expand ideas about contemporary Indigenous aesthetics. This phenomenon can also be a visible means to challenge stereotypes and rigid definitions of us and them. This article draws on scholarly literature, the popular press, and personal experience to examine the growth of skate parks in Native American communities and their implications for Indigenous identity and wellbeing.

Skatepark Worlds

“…Also in the US, the All Nations Skate Project, Stronghold Society and Wounded Knee 4-Directions skateparks have addressed violence, drugs, alcohol and suicide among Native youth; some support has come here from Jeff Ament of rock band Pearl Jam, who has also helped fund several skateparks in lessprivileged neighbourhoods (cf. Ament, 2015;Nieratko, 2015;Weaver, 2016 see also www.strongholdsociety.org). 4 Canada's The Forks skatepark in Winnipeg runs skate camps plus film and photography workshops for under-privileged youth, and is co-located with the world's first Human Rights Museum (cf.…”

Indigenous Memes and the Invention of a People

“…Often informed by static views of Indigenous culture, for a long time, scholarly research on Indigenous people focused on documenting what were seen as “authentic” or “traditional” forms of cultural practice: burial rites, structures of social organization, songs, and so on. Increasingly, however, attention is being paid to contemporary everyday cultural practices of Indigenous groups, such as hip hop (Morgan & Warren, 2011), skateboarding (Weaver, 2016), and country music (Carlson, 2016b). This is important, as Harris and Carlson (2016, p. 460) argue, “not simply because popular culture is a formative area for identity, but because popular culture is also an arena for political struggle.” This work has demonstrated that, through playful engagements with objects, practices and meanings, popular culture is a site of political subversion and transformation for many Indigenous peoples.…”