By Andrew Breaker:
Nearly thirty years ago, the Canadian Native Fastball Tournament was founded with the goal of uniting Indigenous athletes. Every year, the Native Canadian Fastball Championship travels from province to province, winning the hearts of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people around the nation. The Native Canadians receive about 5,000 tourists annually and nearly 1,200 athletes. Regina, Saskatchewan, served as the tournament’s host city this year.
J.D Black is from Siksika Nation, his parents are Cheryl Black from Siksika, and his dad is named John from Manitoba. J.D created the Fastball team “Treaty 7 Athletics” that entered the Candian Fastball Championship Tournament. On the team, it consisted of three individuals not from Siksika: Mario Many Fingers, Winslow Curly Rider, who are from the bloods and Nolan Gustavson. The rest of the team were from Siksika and consisted of the Chance Breaker, Brandon Good Eagle, Grant Black Horse, Pheonix Running Rabbit, Duff Scalplock, Catlin Big Snake, Ty Water Chief, J.D Black, and the coach being Tim Calf Robe, and the team manager being Kassie Black.
The Treaty 7 Athletics played mostly as an away team, so the crowd would regularly be loud for the home team. Another challenge they had was playing against the umps at times with the final game being highly controversial, The Treaty 7 Athletics were up by one run and as they were batting, they managed to hit an infield home run and the team they were playing against protested the bat that was used to hit the home run while the ump took the home run point away. Through the challenges throughout the tournament, Treaty 7 Athletics placed in the top 8 of the tournaments. The teams they played against were from Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba. According to J.D, there was one other Alberta team, that being the renegade’s team by Julez Black.
“Just do it, if you’re going to try something new, then the best thing to do is practice. You can’t just show up somewhere to be good, you have to go at it every day, that is what most of our boys been doing so that is the reason why we got into the position that we are in today because we kept on going with it, we had a good group to do it with.” J.D Black on encouraging someone who would want to get into Fastball. Congratulations to the Treaty 7 Athletics for making it far in an intense tournament!
