Mesquaki Sports Participation as an Adolescent Rite of Passage

This ethno-historical study is based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork among a small group of a thousand woodland Indians residing in central Iowa. It presents a broad cultural explanation why contemporary adolescent Mesquaki males participate less in White sports than previous generations did....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of ritual studies 1993-01, Vol.7 (1), p.27-44
Main Author: Foley, Douglas E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Alcohol drinking
Basketball
High school athletics
Indian culture
Iowa
Native Americans
North Amerindians
Political discourse
Rites of passage
Ritual
Sport
Sports
U.S.A
White people
Whites
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Summary:This ethno-historical study is based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork among a small group of a thousand woodland Indians residing in central Iowa. It presents a broad cultural explanation why contemporary adolescent Mesquaki males participate less in White sports than previous generations did. In the pre-World War II years local Whites discursively constituted Mesquakis as "natural athletes." More recently, Mesquaki political activism is provoking a more negative White discourse about Indian culture, character, and athleticism. An organized temperance campaign and White talk about adolescent "hell-raising" and drinking dominates the contemporary discourse on Mesquaki athletes. In response, Mesquaki youth, especially males, resist this hegemonic discourse in a variety of ways. This paper conceptualizes their resistance as the emergence of a new, modern adolescent rite of passage that differs markedly from the one in which Mesquaki youth of the 1940s and 1950s participated. Unlike mainstream White youth, becoming an adult male in modern Mesquaki society is no longer tied to participation in local sports. Many contemporary Indian youth perceive the White sports scene as biased, politically-corrupt, and racist. In the post-civil rights era these youth now affirm themselves in more Indian ways. Many are attracted to an alternative all-Indian sports scene and to a tribal recreational "hell-raising" and drinking scene. Although selfdestructive for some youth, this more tribally-based male rite of passage is a modern expression of Mesquaki cultural and political solidarity.
ISSN:0890-1112