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Photo: 2024 Tri-Ute Games participants. (Courtesy Tri-Ute Games / Facebook)
The Southern Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Ute Indian tribes recently got together for their annual friendly sports competition for young people.
Clark Adomaitis has more.
At the Ignacio High School gymnasium, young people from three tribes are playing volleyball against each other at the annual Tri-Ute Games.
This year, the Southern Ute Tribe is hosting its sister tribes, the Ute Mountain Ute and Ute Indian Tribes, in Ignacio, Colo.
Other sports taking place throughout the three-day gathering include archery, skateboarding, golf, and hand games.
K’ia Whiteskunk is the recreation director for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. She says that the three sister tribes gathering for this annual event shows unity.
“We have relatives from the other tribes that we don’t get to see. But this is a time that it helps to youth get to know each other and come together.”
Over at the Southern Ute Bear Dance trail, athletes in colored shirts are running the Ute Warrior Challenge.
“Almost there, almost there, just good job, good job.”
Darnell Muniz is a recreation specialist at the Sun Ute Community Center. He’s guiding kids running along the road after they just slid through a slip and slide.
“The challenge is having them running bout half a mile on our Bear Dance trail, and then there at the park we have various events like army crawl, slip and slide.”
Muniz says that this year’s Tri-Ute games was the first one since the COVID-19 pandemic with all three tribes.
In 2022, the games only included two of the three sister tribes.
“They still had the temperature checks and also the mask mandate still so at that time there wasn’t that many participants.”
This year, the Southern Ute and Ute Indian Tribes opened up youth registration to second descendants of tribal members.
Muniz says over 300 youth athletes participated this year.
Next year’s Tri-Ute Games will likely be hosted by the Ute Indian tribe in Fort Duchesne, Utah.
(Photo: Chuck Quirmbach)
A Native American man who was one of three ironworkers who died in a construction accident 25 years ago this summer was recently remembered at a public ceremony.
Chuck Quirmbach of station WUWM reports.
William DeGrave, Jeffrey Wischer, and Jerome Starr died in July 1999, when the so-called man basket they were in crashed to the ground after a crane was unable to control a 450-ton piece of metal roofing being lifted in a strong wind.
The construction project was a new major league baseball stadium, now called American Family Field, where the Milwaukee Brewers play.
Jerome Starr was Ojibwe.
Part of a recent ironworkers-sponsored remembrance ceremony outside the ballpark included tribal member Maynard Webster performing an honor song.
Later, Starr’s sister Katherine Hamilton Starr choked up while talking to a reporter about her relative.
“He was a great brother. He was always providing for everybody. Always cared about everybody. Very caring. He was always there, (if you) needed anything. We were very close.”
Standing next to Katherine was her daughter – Jerome Starr’s niece – Dawn Hamilton, who tearfully relayed a favorite memory.
(Photo: Chuck Quirmbach)
“Going over to Uncle Jerry’s house, in the summertime to go swimming. And then the holidays or whatever, he always opened up his home to everybody in the family. Everybody and anybody was welcome. He kept us united.”
Hamilton and others also took part in a smudging ceremony to pray for the deceased.
Hamilton says she’s grateful all of those who passed away building a ballpark were honored.
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