Chinle, Navajo Nation

Despite many of the teammates living an hour away from school or more, the players of the Chinle High School Mens Basketball team are brothers. Their tribal nation sprawls across northern Arizona and southern Utah and New Mexico. The players and their families face challenges including intergenerational trauma, lack of reliable access to clean water and sparse internet coverage.
Love of the game, family and traditions motivate these players, like any other Americans who love to fill their days with backyard basketball. In Navajoland, the backyards might just have a few more red rocks. 

See the final story as published in The New York Times.