“It was a moment that moved me more than I expected,” the 22-year-old senior wrote in an essay published on the Players’ Tribune on Thursday. “I hadn’t come to Standing Rock to be a ‘role model.’ ”

Koenig, whose mother is Ho-Chunk, a tribe, is aware he’s in a minority.

“I’m one of about 60 Native American students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a school with more than 30,000 undergrads, and one of only about 40 Native American Division I men’s college basketball players in the country,” he said.

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What he wasn’t aware of, however, was how few Native Americans are popular cultural figures until one of the kids at the basketball clinic asked him who his Native American role models were as a kid.

“The question really stopped me in my tracks,” Koenig said. “I felt my voice crack. I knew in my heart that I needed to say something, even if it wasn’t what sounded ‘good.’

“I didn’t grow up with any Native American role models, I said.”

It was at that moment that Koenig said he recognized that he could be a Native American role model for the kids at Standing Rock.

“I knew that if I could be someone who even one kid from Standing Rock looked up to, I’d be prouder of that than of anything I had ever done — or might ever do — on the basketball court,” Koenig wrote. “Looking out at the kids, I was proud that they were seeing someone succeeding who looked a little like they did.”

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