One of the biggest all-Indigenous high school basketball competitions in North America wrapped up in the Valley on Saturday, with two rivalries heating up on center court in the tourney finals at PHX Arena.
The Native American Basketball Invitational — better known as NABI — began with 24 teams in 2003. Now it’s grown to a record 204 teams — including 85 from Arizona and six from Canada — with 3,129 athletes representing more than 160 federally recognized tribes from Phoenix to Anchorage, Alaska.
They played 508 games in all — ending with Arizona’s Rezbombers program making history by having both boys and girls teams vying to become national champions in the pair of bracket finals.
The boys squad dropped 78-64 to Phoenix’s Young Gunz, while the defending girls champs defeated Oklahoma’s Legendary Elite 58-47 in a rematch from last year — winning their third NABI title in four years.
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Representatives from the Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes spoke in front of a Senate Committee to support the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement. -
Native American tribes across the West are trying — and in more and more cases succeeding — in getting ancestral lands back. -
American bison are a symbol of the West that might’ve vanished from this landscape entirely — if not for conservation efforts. Each year, the city of Denver donates buffalo from a long-established herd to federally recognized tribes and nonprofits. -
The U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs has invited tribal leaders from across the Grand Canyon State to testify on Capitol Hill. The Northeast Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Act is the subject of Wednesday’s hearing. -
Highschoolers across six BIE-run schools in South Dakota, Oklahoma, Montana and New Mexico are already participating, including Northwest High School in Shiprock on the Navajo Nation.
