A Native Golf Tradition

The Minnesota Indian Golf Classic contains a legacy of colorful characters and great golf stories.

November 30, 2022 | 4 min.
By Mark Craig

It’s the summer of ‘69 and six Native American golfers are enjoying a post-round beer in Blackduck, Minn., when one of them leans forward and says, “Let’s do it. Let’s organize an all-Indian golf tournament and see how it goes.”

Walker’s Joe Aitken, a 20-something at the time, laughs while sharing the humble beginnings of the Minnesota Indian Golf Classic. Now an annual staple of the northern Minnesota golf scene, the tournament has grown exponentially over the past 53 years while being held every second weekend in August except for the pandemic season of 2020.

“The development of Indian golfers from 1990 to present day, has really exploded, but there were very, very few Indian golfers in the late ’60s,” said Aitken, now 76. “So, we put out a flyer and got maybe 20 golfers. The entry fee was $5 and that got you 18 holes at Blackduck, a nine-hole course we started out at, and beans and wieners at a campfire afterwards. I mean, my gosh, five bucks for golf, beans and wieners? How could we go wrong?”

Getting Started 
The other five Native American golfing visionaries who were in on the ground floor of this tournament were Joe’s brothers, Roger and Larry; Francis “Chunky” Brun, Jim Lawrence and Earl “Buck” Sargent, the hockey dad to former North Stars defenseman Gary Sargent. The Aitkens represented Leech Lake Indian Reservation. Brun and Lawrence were from Red Lake Indian Reservation. The state’s nine other Native American tribes eventually came to be represented, as well as tribes from California, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, Washington, D.C. and Canada.

“We went from wieners and beans around a fire to fresh walleye on white linen,” Aitken said. “We came a long way.”

Ed Demery Jr., one of the top two players on the golf team at Bemidji High School, won the first tournament.

“An Indian kid being one of the top players at a school that size was a big deal,” Aitken said. “Our local newspaper guy, Cliff Morlan of the Bemidji Pioneer, named him the ‘Sweet Swingin’ Sioux.’ Every Indian has a nickname.”

Joe is called “Hooker,” because that’s what his golf ball does. His brother Roger is, “Geesh.” 

Why?

“Because when he was little, he couldn’t say, ‘Geese,’” Joe said. “He’d say, ‘Mom, look at all the, ‘Geesh.’ Hey, once you get a nickname with us, it’s yours for life.’”

Expanding to Tianna 
The Minnesota Indian Golf Classic moved from Blackduck to Tianna Country Club in Walker in 1975. The growing fields needed an 18-hole layout, and Joe Aitken was close to Ray Sauer, a childhood buddy, college roommate and a pillar among Tianna’s membership.

“Ray’s one of the many people who helped us get started,” Aitken said. “He’s a white guy I turned to at first because I had never run a golf tournament, and Ray had started the Two-Man, Best-Ball at Tianna.

“When it came time to move the tournament, John Johnson, the manager at Tianna at the time, was very, very receptive and partial to Indian people. Over time, it’s become more than a golf tournament. It’s an annual family reunion for Indian people because of how well they are treated.”

The tournament was expanded to 27 holes when it was moved to Tianna in 1975. The fields are capped at 130 players and some non-Native Americans are now permitted to play.
Aitken, for good reason, has no trouble remembering when the tournament moved to Tianna. 

That’s because he won it in 1974, the last year Blackduck hosted.

“To this day, Ed LeBeau still mentions that 1974 tournament to me,” Aitken said. “He calls it, ‘The Old Towel Trick’ tournament.”

The ’74 tournament was played in heavy rain. Aitken and LeBeau finished tied atop the leaderboard with 78s.

“We go to the first playoff hole and there’s standing water on the green,” LeBeau recalls.

LeBeau had about a 7-footer. Aitken had about a 5-footer.

“I putted first and my ball kind of floated through the water and ended up off to the side of the hole,” LeBeau said. “I guess that gave Joe an idea. He takes out his towel and drags it down the path of his putt to absorb the water.”

Aitken made the putt.

“I still got a newspaper picture of Ed and I together after that,” Aitken said. “He’s smiling, but he’s not happy. After I made the putt, he says, ‘Whoa, whoa, wait, wait, you can’t do that!’ I says, ‘Ed, I was watching TV over the weekend and there was a tournament that got rain and they squeegeed off the greens. What’s the difference?’ He said, ‘Well, I’m going to protest.’ Either way, my name’s on the trophy.”

It stings a little less for LeBeau that he did win the tournament the year before. But only a little less.

Good Times, Great Stories
“Many years later, in I think the late ‘80s or ‘90s, there was an argument by some guys down at Walker,” LeBeau said. “And one of them decided to call the pro at Bemidji Country Club and ask him about, ‘The Old Towel Trick.’ And the pro says, ‘As soon as Joe’s towel hit the green, he lost that hole.’ So, there you go.

“It’s funny because it kept coming up all the time. Even my daughter finally said to me one year, ‘Let it go, Dad!’ So, hey, we’re both on the trophy.”

Speaking of the trophy, it’s not the original one that Betty Hawkins, the daughter of Tianna’s owner, had made for Aitken. That one disappeared in about 1986.

“We wanted a nice traveling trophy to put our names on and be like the British Open,” Aitken said. “Ralph Day, my cousin from Hayward, California, was real active in an Indian association out there at the time. So, he invites Arnie Hawkins, no relation to Betty, to come play.”

Arnie shot lights out.

“That was Arnie’s only year playing,” Aitken said. “He won the tournament, and the son of a gun took our traveling trophy back to California and never came back.”

“So, I go to Betty and tell her the guy walked off with our trophy. She said, ‘Joe, I’ll buy you another one, but this is the last one you’re getting.”

Aitken is laughing pretty hard at this point in the story. There are so many fun memories filling his head. So many good times. So many stories about strangers from all over the country and Canada who became lifelong friends because every year they set aside the second weekend in August for a special fellowship with others initially connected only by their Native American heritage and a burning love of golf.

“Unfortunately, everyone from the beginning is dying off,” Aitken said. “But you look back on it and see how far it’s come from that handful of guys eating wieners and beans around a campfire.

"It’s a golf tournament, but it’s more. It’s Indian people renewing old friendships and making new ones along the way.”

“I really think the stars were aligned perfectly for us when we said, ‘Let’s organize an all-Indian golf tournament and see how it goes.’”  

Mark Craig

An award-winning sports-writer the past 35 years, Mark Craig has covered golf, the Gophers, the Vikings and the NFL since joining the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1999. His Back Spin column in the Minnesota Golfer magazine has won three gold awards from the Minnesota Media & Publishing Association.  

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