Gina Adams is interested in histories of cultural preservation and forced assimilation. In that context, basketball holds mixed connotations for her. She acknowledges that many Native Americans see the game as a path to both higher education and acceptance into popular culture. But, she also notes that basketball’s history in Native communities goes back to early twentieth-century boarding schools that forced indigenous students to assimilate to White culture. Covered with her own hybrid vocabulary of designs inspired by those found in Native arts, Adams’s ceramic basketballs bear witness to these conflicting associations.
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