Kyrie Irving already added “actor” to his resume this summer, and now he will be able to add “diplomat” as well.
Fred Katz of MassLive.com relayed on Friday that the Boston Celtics star will be visiting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on Aug. 23 for a ceremony in his honor, citing an official release from the tribe. The ceremony for Irving, who has ancestry with the tribe, will take place in North Dakota.
Katz adds that the All-Star guard’s late mother, Elizabeth Ann Larson, was part of the tribe but was adopted out of it when she was a child. Irving’s grandmother and great-grandparents were citizens of Standing Rock as well.
Irving himself, meanwhile, has a Standing Rock tattoo on the back of his neck, and his recently-released signature shoe with Nike has a Standing Rock seal on the back. He also expressed support for the Native American community’s mass protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.
It has certainly been an offseason of wholesome news for Irving, and getting in further touch with his roots later this month will only add to that.
