Bronson Koenig is using his newfound national platform to speak out against mistreatment of Native Americans.
On January 11, 2015, Bronson Koenig, backup point guard for the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team, was thrust into a starting role for the NCAA basketball’s sixth-ranked team after senior point guard Traevon Jackson went down with a broken foot. “I’m obviously going to have to start being more vocal as a leader,” Koenig, a sophomore, said following the announcement. “One area of improvement I need to really start working on is my leadership and being more vocal, but I’m confident that I’ll step into that role.”
Since entering into the spotlight, Koenig has been vocal indeed, on and off the court. A proud member of the
Ho-Chunk Nation, Koenig is one of only forty-two athletes in Division I NCAA basketball who identify as American Indian/Alaskan Native out of the more than 10,000 Division I basketball players in this country. The Ho-Chunk’s land once spread across Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota. Throughout the 1800s, however, they were removed from their lands eleven times, eventually being forced to move to parcels of land in Wisconsin and Nebraska. Koenig grew up not far from this land, in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, where he attended powwows and learned about his Native heritage. He has used his newfound national platform to show his Native pride, especially when it comes to the fight against racist mascots.
Soon after assuming the role of starting point guard, Koenig
spoke with Brian Hamilton of
Sports Illustrated about being a role model for Native American youth. Days later he touched on the subject again in an
interview with Jeff Potrykus of the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel. “His tone changed,” however, “when the topic turned to the treatment of American Indians,” Potrykus wrote. “When a Native American kid sees that growing up and sees the disrespect, it lowers their self-esteem and puts them in a lower place in society,” Koenig told him. He continued, “It’s honoring them? It’s not racist? How are you going to say that when you’re not a Native American?” Koenig made sure to highlight the name of the Washington football team being the worst: “That term comes from when we were skinned and our flesh was red. I don’t see how that is honoring us in anyway.”
