Stakes Races, Indian Relay Highlight Card
BY JIM WELLS Sometimes the name game works as well as more time honored methods for handicapping a race. Other times, turns of phrase are required, too. Saturday, for instance: A horse named Beach Flower demonstrated she is no wall flower, another named Giant Payday didn’t live up to his name but was a winner […]
Relay Team Bears A Strong Message
BY JIM WELLS Everybody at the table had seen the movie, Wind River, a murder mystery that takes place on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, a production of what is happening with shameful and painful regularity across the nation. The conversation had started with a discussion of the top hat Jesse James White had […]
He Dreams of Horses, in Lakota
BY JIM WELLS His dreams have always been about horses. As a young boy, that is what filled his head as he slept. The affinity he found in sleep for horses shaped his manner of handling them during his waking hours He always uses his voice and hands, never an instrument of pain to communicate […]
Three $50,000 Turf Stake Races Saturday at Canterbury Park
Indian Horse Relay Championship also on 5:00 p.m. racing program Three $50,000 turf stakes, the Minnesota HBPA Distaff, the Brooks Fields Stakes, and the Mystic Lake Turf Sprint, will be co-features on Saturday’s thoroughbred race card that begins at 5:00 p.m. at Canterbury Park. The stakes will be run as races three through five on […]
Bushrod Wins 1st Mystic Lake Turf Express
By Jim Wells Only in horse racing do the storylines sometimes seem to come out of a children’s storybook, heroes emerging from unlikely places under unusual circumstance; little guys being lifted to the level of those who dominate the world up above; heartwarming tales of the men and women who keep the world turning but […]
Winning Rider Raises Tribal Issues
By Jim Wells It is a simple matter to misinterpret the title for the entry song that preceded Friday’s Indian Relay Races, “Every time I bring a horse into the arena, I give it away.” At first thought, we’re talking claiming horses, are we not? We are not. The song which preceded the first Indian […]
Tribal Racing Once Again A Hit
By JIM WELLS The song was beat out on the drums and accompanied by the old lyrical ululations that brought it all to life, an appropriate accompaniment to what was about to take place. Lakota Sioux singers introduced Thursday night’s opening Indian relay races, the first of three such evenings, with a song entitled, “We […]
Horse Racing Ancient Indian Tradition
By Jim Wells Outside, over 150 horses grazed under the watchful eye of White Man’s Dog….It seemed odd that two sleeps ago these horses were content to belong to the Crow. Now they were Pikuni (Blackfeet) horses and seemed equally content. FOOLS CROW BY JAMES WELCH By some accounts, the first sport in the American […]
DERBY TITLE STAYS IN MINNESOTA
BY JIM WELLS The $200,000 Mystic Lake Derby is the crown jewel of the racing season at Canterbury Park, an annual race for 3-year-olds that creates a certain type of anticipation and excitement. Wet, chilly weather threatened to dampen much of that anticipation when it moved into the area late this week. Yet, as if […]
RELAY RACING A CULTURAL TRADITION FOR LAKOTA
BY JIM WELLS The Great Sioux Nation once spread over what became five states and more, encompassing what the Oyate – the people – called the Ocheti Sakowin, the seven council fires, a tribe that spoke the same language with three distinct dialects – Dakota, Lakota and Nakota. For hundreds of years, dating to the […]
