The Lakota Nation Invitational is an annual multi-sport event tournament held each winter that began in 1976.

[1] The event has categories including basketball, traditional Lakota hand games, knowledge and language bowls, a student art show, a business plan competition, wrestling, volleyball, cross country, archery, golf and a chess tournament.

The basketball tournament developed out of tensions resulting from the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973.

[6] In the three years following the seventy-one-day occupation, stabbings, shootings, and beatings related to the conflict became common, and by 1975, the impoverished Pine Ridge Indian Reservation had the highest murder rate in the United States.

Three years later, the tournament relocated to the recently constructed Rushmore Plaza Civic Center Arena in order to better accommodate large crowds of spectators.