Rattle shaking, singing and bluffing: Hand game matches draw crowds at AIHEC conference

The community-based game consists of players from opposing teams taking turns guessing the hand in which their opponents are holding a specific marked item.

Hand games often settled disputes among tribes in much of North America, but not all tribes played them. Tribes in the south and east, for example, played stick ball instead, and the game is now called by its French misnomer: lacrosse.

The AIHEC conference, typically attended by more than 1,000 Tribal College and University students, took place March 14-18.

“People take hand games very seriously at AIHEC,” Amber Finley of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College told Buffalo’s Fire. “We still have some of those old traditional rivalries. It is a nice, healthy way to see the old rivalries to this day as the next generation carries on the traditions.”

The match is intense and can last for hours, with animated observers and participants hand drumming, rattle shaking, singing and bluffing. The goal is to gather sticks. Each team starts with an equal number and earns sticks by correctly guessing, with hand signals, the location of the marked items. Teams must have between 6 and 12 players.

Tara Agwiak, a student from the Iḷisaġvik College in Alaska, said that this was her first hand game experience and that she was fascinated by the competition. “I love seeing how much they get into the game,” she told Buffalo’s Fire. “This has been so fun.”

The College of Muscogee Nation, whose students are largely citizens of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma, placed third in this year’s tournament. The Muscogee Creek did not traditionally play the game, though. The songs they sang for competition were Ponca. The Osage, another Oklahoma-based tribe, historically played hand games and carried on hand game songs that are still sung today.

Many students participate in multiple competitions at AIHEC, running from event to event and preparing for their next one during the hand game tournament, because it takes so long.

Diné College defeated Sinte Gleska University in the championship game, which lasted about 40 minutes and ended at midnight. Nanibah Bigman, Diné College’s team captain, said after winning the final game, “It was pretty hectic and stressful, but I believed in myself and we managed to get it done.”