Fort Shaw Indian School Girls Basketball Team becomes World Champions at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 1904.
The seven members of the original team included Genie Butch, Belle Johnson, Nettie Wirth, Minnie Burton, Emma Rose Sansaver, Josephine Langely, and Delia Gebeau.
Native American boarding schools, such as Fort Shaw, were integral to the United States' policy of cultural genocide for American Indians. World's Fairs also played a key role in affirming white supremacy and presenting American Indians as an uncivilized artifact of the past.
Recommended reading:
Brownell, Susan, The 1904 Anthropology Days and Olympic Games. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.
Parezo, Nancy J. and Don D. Fowler, Anthropology Goes to the Fair: The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
Peavy, Linda; Smith, Ursula (2001). "World champions: The 1904 girls' basketball team from Fort Shaw Indian boarding school". The Magazine of Western History 51 (4): 2–25.
Rydell, Robert W., All the World's a Fair. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984.