Telling Our Stories: Lakota Skaters and the legacy of Ground Control

The wind moves cold and unobstructed  across the Dakota plains.  It whips the snow drifts up against the yellow metal siding of a long one story building in the town of Pine Ridge. The snow piles rise until they obscure parts of the graffiti script  that decorates the outer walls. Skillfully drawn by the graffiti artist Lakota, large white and red script proclaiming “LAKOTA SKATEBOARDING.” Even though it’s only 5pm, the sun is long gone and stars are starting to surface in the vast blue of the night sky.

It’s Tuesday which means it’s time for Thrasher school. An opportunity for those new to skating to learn the basics and a chance for more seasoned skaters to hang and share their knowledge…plus there’s free pizza. 

“I didn’t necessarily really know this is what I’d be doing with my life one day, but I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing.” Kyle Mesteth says, speaking about Ground Control, the indoor skatepark he’s created in the heart of the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation. 

“The name Ground Control came from the David Bowie song, Space Oddity. I was struggling  to come up with a name after getting the building and then that song came on the radio. It just fit my goals of wanting to build a launch pad for our talented people here to chase their dreams and reach for the stars. The idea that the sky’s the limit.” 

Referring to this place simply as an indoor skatepark, although accurate, comes across as  reductive. Sure, it’s a collection of ramps and flat-bars filled with decks and trucks but the vision it encompasses is much greater. There’s a spot for making and recording music; editing and filming movies or TikToks, weights and even exercise equipment.  Just a few weeks ago it became a warming center, passing out heated blankets and warmers (donated by the Red Road Institute and Seeding Sovereignty)  to the community. 

Kyle & Ground Control squad

The Pine Ridge Reservation is a land that breathes history. At 11,000 square miles it’s the one of the largest reservations in the US with an approximate population of 18,000 people scattered throughout the nine counties that compose it. It’s home to massacres, movements and enduring resistance to a colonized world that seeks its exploitment. Its borders hold the generational trauma of the people within. Too little attention from the outside world is paid to what voices within these communities  say is  needed to help them heal and bring them justice. 

Statistics give an idea of what residents are up against. Pine Ridge (with a total land area of 2.1 million acres) has one of the lowest life expectancy in the U.S. Unemployment is high, two of the poorest communities within the U.S. are located within Pine Ridge. The health statistics for the Reservation paint a further grim picture.   

These are not facts to which Kyle is blind. He’s lived it, survived it and having done so he understands better than most that these numbers aren’t the whole story. It’s one of the main reasons why he worked with local groups to get the grant money to purchase all of the multimedia equipment. Whether through skating, making movies, filming Tiktoks, or creating music, the driving vision behind what he’s doing with Ground Control is the belief that salvation lies in expression.

“We have to tell our own stories. We have to make our own movies! We have to be able to do this ourselves. That's key.” he adds thoughtfully. “So that’s what we’re doing now because that’s where you get power,  telling your stories. And people [from outside media] may still come here and attempt to do what they do,  like, [he deepens his voice for dramatic effect] ‘I’m going to show this third world country in the middle of America! The poorest county in the nation!’ and then they see Ground Control. 

Then it's like ‘Yo, they’re already telling their own stories and it’s more than just the statistics!’ It flips the whole script. Ground Control has the power to change even those minds. The media says one thing about us, but the reality is we're beautiful people, powerful people; and once we realize our power there’s no stopping us. I  noticed at one point that I’ve been affected by that mainstream idea. This idea that, like we’re so fucking beat down here, and to be able to come out of that...” he shakes his head. 

Kyle's love of movies and his belief in that power are the main reasons he went beyond limiting Ground Control as just a place to skate and worked to obtain the funding to set up a film studio in the space, with cameras, lights, a greenscreen and editing software. That way skaters using the facility can learn to record, cut and edit their own movies. If you check out the Ground Control Instagram you’ll see multiple examples of how they’ve adapted and reinvented big screen classics to reflect the studio’s location within Pine Ridge. He hopes the skaters will use the equipment to film and edit their own skate films and that one day they will make a documentary about what  they’re doing with this space. 

“Movie making is something I’ve been interested in my whole life. Here, people will come in, they’ll make their movie, tell their story and they’ll leave. Having this space with all the equipment to make these things, nobody can tell us ‘no’. Telling our own stories is key. It’s what pushed us to get this building, it’s what we’re doing here…changing the narrative.” 

In addition to the multimedia equipment and the skate ramps,  Kyle also is currently working on building a kitchen in the hopes it can be used to start teaching the kids who come to skate how to prepare traditional recipes and to ultimately encourage food sovereignty by relearning many of the skills that once supported the Lakota people.

“Imagine the kid who comes here, eats his traditional food, drinks water, stays here all day, goes home, goes to bed and then the next day does the same thing? With no outside influence from the colonized world.  The goal is to eventually have a buffalo kill for each of the skaters and then have the food to give to the community and they'll get the buffalo hide. And then we’ll have a sweat lodge. Getting it all back. Americans don’t have that rite of passage, like ‘How do I become an adult in my society?” That sort of thing is important, it teaches you responsibility and strength in your community.”

Kyle is quick to add that he doesn’t think he’s the one that’s going to entirely save the Lakota culture. He’s aware that there are many in the Lakota community dedicating their lives to learning and sharing traditional knowledge and skills. While that may be true, what he’s done with Ground Control is create a space that draws in skaters looking to use the tools of the contemporary era (skateboarding, social media, music etc.) to connect to their heritage. Using skateboarding, he’s helping repair a connection for his community back to itself. When he looks back at how Ground Control came to exist, he can see it’s the pieces of that community that helped him build this place. 

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Toby Eagle Bull grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the nineties. His skills at basketball and his likable personality made him a star in the local high school and in the community at large. He watched his younger cousin Kyle Mesteth and a small crew of scrappy skaters (that made up the entirety of the Pine Ridge scene) work to carve out a place for skateboarding where there wasn't one before. Spots were few and far between but they made the most of neighborhood curbs and schoolyard benches. 

“Toby began to see what [skateboarding] was about and he started gravitating towards that, by his senior year he’d become a skater.” 

Soon the cousins were closer than they had ever been, bonding over skate videos,  the THPS videogame, the struggle to land tricks and progress. Kyle’s father was a carpenter and built them a little quarter pipe to learn on. He also taught them how to build the ramps for themselves, lessons that would become crucial later on in the early days of Ground Control. 

At that time in the 90s, street skating was king. A style born out of the inaccessibility of vert skating and the scarcity of skateparks.  Street skating as a philosophy to redefine the purpose of the world around you.

Toby would pick up Kyle and they’d cruise around seeking out spots. After senior year, Toby left to attend Haskill Indian University in Kansas but he never lost his passion for skating and whenever he returned to Pine Ridge on a break, the crew would pick up just where they left off. Then, in summer of 2002 Toby lost his life in a car wreck. 

“That devastated me. That devastated the whole town cause he was like a superstar. Everyone loved him, I’ve never seen such a big funeral.” Kyle remembered.

Toby Eagle Bull

To honor Toby’s and the impact he’d had, his family and friends organized a skateboard competition on the reservation. The first “Toby Classic” was held on a basketball court. Kyle’s father built all of the obstacles for it. It was a huge success and soon became  an annual event to remember their fallen bud. 

For the next ten years the cycle repeated. Kyle’s dad would get to work in the spring building new obstacles for the Toby Classic. They would remain on the basketball court through the summer and fall, then the harsh South Dakotan winter would swoop in and destroy them. This sand mandala approach to skatepark maintenance changed when Kyle’s mom ran into Stronghold Society director Walt Pourier at a Powwow. After explaining the scene to Walt,  a real effort to build a concrete skatepark that would stand up to the elements was launched by Stronghold Society. This led to Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament and skatepark building pioneer Mark “Monk” Hubbard’s company Grindline becoming involved and seeing the project through to completion.  

In 2012, The Toby Eagle Bull Memorial Wounded Knee Skatepark was officially opened and the skaters on Pine Ridge finally had the park that Kyle, Toby and so many of the older skaters had never thought was even a possibility. 

 Pine Ridge Reservation has one of the highest suicide rates in the country,  150% higher than the rest of the United States. It has been declared an epidemic and “a state of emergency” by Tribal Authorities, healthcare providers and community leaders, demanding more resources and attention from the Federal government. After the completion of the park the scene blew up and Kyle saw an immediate positive impact. 

“Between the yearly competitions and then the building of this world class park, the scene just blossomed. The suicide rate for skaters in our community went to zero.” 

Kyle became a more  active part in organizing the Toby Classic and soon began announcing and running the event. This was after some years of struggling with his own self definition and he began to find that he was still needed in the Pine Ridge skate scene and that the scene was still very much a part of him. He found his voice in hyping up the sessions and getting skaters involved.  

“It became a thing where every year after the Toby Classic would end, it was like ‘Oh man, I can’t wait for next year.’ My cousin and I would just be playing Playstation through the winter constantly talking and planning for next year.”  

At the time the skate competition was held once yearly, but Kyle saw the potential (and more importantly, the need) for other events to bring people together. In the winter of 2019 he came up with the idea to host a talent competition in each of Pine Ridge’s 9 counties, with the finalists of each show then competing in one big event during the reservation basketball tournament. The communities came out and the first shows were a success. Despite the warm reception these events received, COVID-19 put a stop to the series before the final event could be held. After all the positive momentum that followed the construction of the park, the scene went quiet and stayed that way for close to two years. This led Kyle to action once again.

“So 2020 comes and we don’t have the big fair during which the Toby Classic happens. Then another year passes and still no fair, no skate competition and I’m just down at the park one day like, ‘Yo we gotta do something, all these skaters are down here but nothing is going on’. So I began organizing and hosting these Sunday skate comps.”

Every Sunday through  the summer of 2022 Kyle would hold skateboard competitions down at the park using decks his cousin donated for prizes . 

“I began announcing again, learning all the names of the new skaters and getting to know the new generation of kids coming up. I do this every Sunday through the summer [and into the fall].” 

The gatherings began to fuel the energy that they’d lost after two years of lockdown but a different more predictable problem loomed on the horizon. 

“I was like ‘Yo, what is gonna happen when it snows?’ This is always a problem. The snow comes, shuts down the park and forces kids to skate in their basements.”

The Pine Ridge scene had already missed out on almost two years of gathering together and skating. Now that the energy was back he didn’t want to give it up, even for a season, so he began looking for a space. 

“I found the current location and knew we had to get the building. It had the space for what we wanted to see happen, to make music, movies, and a skatepark. So I start asking around and it turns out the Tribe owns it. A lot of the buildings are owned by the Lakota Housing Authority or whatever but the Tribe owns this one. It used to be a Boys and Girls Club but then just became a place for file storage. When we found it it was just filled with paper, floor to ceiling.”

They got permission from the Tribe to use the space and cleared out all of the files. Once that was completed the next step was to build the skate obstacles that would compose the indoor park. In 2020, Kyle not only lost the scene he was helping to build, but also his father, who passed away. He has provided with some life insurance money from his father’s estate and used this  to invest in a decent set of carpentry tools, figuring (at the time) that the path for him was to follow in his father’s footsteps as a carpenter. Now, he was using those same tools to build the quarter pipes, the miniramp, a funbox and other skate features for Ground Control. It was a bittersweet case of coming full circle, his father once again helping to build a park for skaters on the reservation. 

The skaters showed up to help every step of the way, from clearing boxes to building ramps and within ten days of getting the building things started taking shape. All of the ramps and features were built with the help of the kids who now skate them with Kyle teaching many how to do things like measure, identify tools and put in the screws. 

“I just didn’t let them do any cuts. I handled all the cuts. Didn’t want anyone losing a finger! That would’ve been a bad start to the project,” he laughs. 

Funding for the initial costs to get materials for the ramps and get things up and running came from a GoFundMe site and a grant from the Oglala Sioux Tribal Child Care organization.

“It’s crazy, twenty some odd years ago, my dad built the first ramp on Pine Ridge, and now twenty years later here I am building them. I didn’t know all this would happen. I didn’t know Toby was going to die and as a result save all these kids. It makes me proud to be Lakota and to be doing this. I’m doing something bigger than myself and I have a lot of gratitude for that and for all the people who are helping me.”

They’ve recently started a non-profit called Lakota Future Inc. with the hopes that it will make Ground Control less dependent on large donations from other organizations/programs and continue to ensure a legacy of  the autonomous spirit they’ve started with. 

Kyle pauses, taking in the quiet of the cavernous space around him which will soon be filled with kids coming in from school, then the thundering sound of urethane wheels on wooden ramps, laughter and music. 

“You know, people will think you’re crazy until it happens. There was a time where I would be like ‘I’m going to get a building and put a ramp in there, and there will be a stage and we’re gonna do a podcast and we’re going to make videos. There was a time when those were just words coming out of my mouth.”

When we spoke Ground Control wasn’t even “officially” opened yet because they’re not fully staffed but Kyle said every morning by the time he shows up there’s at least 15 kids waiting in the parking lot and throughout the day he estimates a minimum of 50 kids come through. Even a recent blizzard couldn’t slow things down. 

“I’m from Pine Ridge, I don’t plan on leaving this place. I don’t want to go off and live on some island, or have the biggest house on the biggest hill. I want to stay here and take care of my family. I want to take care of my town and my people.”  

A gust of icy cold wind pours into the room as the main door opens and kids begin to pour in from the outside, kicking snow off their shoes and dumping backpacks. Rushing towards the pile of boards and helmets; the computer and the media studio. In a space they helped create that’s based off the simple tenet of following your heart. Kyle takes it all in. 

“Skateboarding is magic.”  He says.