SOURCE: Donahue, Peter. “New Warriors, New Legends: Basketball in Three Native American Works of Fiction.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 21, no. 2 (spring 1997): 44–48, 51–55, 57–60.

In the following excerpt, Donahue discusses the significance of basketball in Native-American culture as evidenced in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Reservation Blues.

In basketball, we find enough reasons to believe in God …

—Sherman Alexie.¹

… In the past two decades, basketball has become an obsession on many American Indian reservations. This obsession has brought exuberance and dejection, pride and shame, and hope and despair to the many Indian youth who play the game as well as to spectators. As played by Native Americans, the game has been influenced by various traditional customs, beliefs, and legends. At the same time, it has exerted its own reshaping influence upon these cultural forces. Throughout Welch's The Indian Lawyer and Alexie's Lone Ranger and Tonto...