by By Brent Cahwee, Co-founder
NDNSPORTS.COM made its debut to the world on October 8th, 2000 with the mission of providing news and stories of Native American athletes who compete in professional and college sports.
That simple mission, with which myself and co-founder John Harjo dreamt of, helped us launch our website two decades ago and remains our driving force today — to provide as much news and coverage of the thousands of Native athletes in Indian Country.
When we started the website, we had no idea that it would lead us on a journey throughout the many reservations and indigenous communities in nearly every state. We have been fortunate to be able to visit with legends of the past, watch college athletes turn into professional athletes and career professionals. Along the way, we have tried to tell the stories from every community as best we could but with over 570+ tribal nations it is just an impossible to cover them all.
The first ten years were up and down in terms of finding athletes, you wouldn’t believe the pain staking task of trying to find these athletes when there is no way to identify Native college and professional athletes, we were literally creating the “database” day-by-day as we researched the internet and using our contacts.
Now, fast forward 20 years, with the onslaught of many social media platforms, we have been able to grow our audience beyond what we could have imagined twenty years ago. Social media has also made it a lot easier to reach and locate athletes we would have never been able to find like in the first ten years. I think of the quote from the 1989 movie Field of Dreams starring Kevin Costner, “If you build it, they will come”, and that is exactly what we have done now.
Most of what we provide these days is only on our social media platforms but we do still keep the website up-and-running so it can be a resource for people who want to find about Native athletes or research our older stories. Our contributor writers have provided us with great stories and still do today, so if you are looking to start a sports writing career or need an outlet, hit us up!
We have also been blessed to have a great team of contributing writers, photographers and volunteer “fans” who have been invaluable to us over the years. Without them, we would not still be here today so before I forget their names John and I say thanks to: Teri Joe, Ryan Coody, Charlie Perry, Tyler Jones, Reid Williams, Rich Winter, Chris Vale, Troy Littledeer and Dan Ninham.
In these times we do not know what the future holds but rest assured we will continue to provide you with the whatever Native athlete content, news and stories we can find.
So, thanks for being a follower, fan, reader and friend of NDNSPORTS.com. With your continued support, we look forward to providing another 20 years of coverage of our Native American athletes.
Follow NDNSPORTS on Twitter: @ndnsports
Follow NDNSPORTS on Instagram: @ndnsports
Follow NDNSPORTS on Facebook: www.facebook.com/NativeAmericanAthletes
I deeply appreciate your bringing our young natives to light and feel proud to read about their great accomplishments, thanks to the great team workers of ND sports.com for all the hard work put into making sure the people know.