Ski Show launches campaign to get Native Americans on the slopes

By Suzy 'Chapstick' Chaffee

I am so proud that Bernie Weichsel's 2009 Minnesota Ski and Snowboard Expo at the Minneapolis Convention Center Nov 6-8, launched a national outreach to Native American kids this Vancouver “Tribal” Olympic Year. His shows are getting the word out that Native American kids are warmly welcomed to participate in the free and discounted “Learn to Ski, Snowboard and Snowshoe programs in most snow states. This will do wonders to expand healthy grassroots winter sports opportunities so Indian youth can have Olympic Dreams.

In 2002, David Ingimie, president of the SnowSports Industries of America (SIA), heroically donated $600,000 worth of snow sports gear to 45 tribes, “to help create a healthy generation of Native American Olympians.”

With the support of Telluride's General Schwarzkopf, many ski areas have been sharing the joy of skiing and snowboarding with tribal youth in their ancestral lands, which has been doing wonders to turn around Native youth, which have twice the obesity, diabetes, school dropout and suicide rates of any race. But the recession has reduced those ski ops.

Only one Native American, Billy Kidd (VT Abenaki Olympian), has competed in the Olympic in this millennium. A board member of the Native American Olympic Team Foundation (NAOTF), Kidd put three talented Natives under his wing to train at Steamboat's WinterSports Club. Six-year-old Delaney Tyon, a Lakota from Pine Ridge and the poorest reservation in America, then won the 2008 National NASTAR Ski Championships.

This Indian Olympic Outreach grew wings when John Nepture, a Penobscot leader, brought the tribes of Maine to Sugarloaf ski area to dance and ski/board in a magnificent cross-cultural exchange.

Mickey MacWilliams, executive director of the Michigan Snowsports Industries Association, said that that Native Americans can participate in Learn A Snow Sport Month and other discounted and free skiing programs at many states across the country. Information about these programs is available at WinterFeelsGood.com.

Because it is rare that many Native adults have been able to afford to learn to ski or snowboard, I encourage Indian kids to search for a responsible relative, teacher or adult friend (of any culture), who need to have fun too, to take them, or vice versa. Lift tickets are often discounted early and late season. Smiling four-year-olds have taken my hand at powwows and asked, “When can we go skiing again, Suzy?”

Glen Plake, the Xtreme ski star who sports a Mohawk haircut, is the national Learn A Snow Sport Month spokesperson. And while getting the word out at the shows about this historic Native American outreach, the press could help raise awareness of millions more kids that they too can affordably enjoy exciting winter sports.

These compassionate programs are a brilliant economic stimulus for the ski industry, while growing generations of happy skiers and boarders. And good karma, especially welcoming tribal youth back to their beloved lands to ski and board, often inspires snow blessings.

I honor my fellow Olympians at our reunion for voting our foundation a grant to help ensure that future generations can enjoy snowsports by inspiring ski areas to invite their tribes home to ski and board and remind us how to live again in more harmony with Nature.

(Olympic ski racer and 3X World Freestyle Champion, Suzy Chaffee, is co-chair of the Native American Olympic Team Foundation, a 501(c)3 cross-cultural partnership. She was inducted into the Vermont Ski Hall of Fame by John Fry, former Editor -in-Chief of Ski Magazine, for pioneering: Title 1X, Freestyle, Olympic reform, short skis, Native Ski programs and snow dances. More information is available at WWW.SNOW-RIDERS.ORG.