Keep an eye out on your local PBS station for Playing for the World: The 1904 Fort Shaw Indian Girls’ Basketball Team.

In 1902, a unique combination of Native women came together at a boarding school in Montana. They used the new sport of basketball to help them adjust to a rapidly changing world. Their travels and experiences led them to places they never imagined. Ultimately, these women played for something much larger than themselves.

If the story sounds familiar, you may recall Full Court Press was recently published covering the same story, and the both authors were interviewed for the Montana-based project.

Over a 10-year period, authors Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith dug deeply into tribal, state and federal records, period newspapers and journals and personal papers and family records, supplied by descendents of the team, their classmates and the Fort Shaw faculty and staff. Their remarkable sleuthing has shaped a book that’s both thorough and engaging.