Today, we’re going to take a little field trip. 

Don’t worry about your permission slips or transportation fees, you won’t have any.  Are you ready? 

Stickball, the precursor of Lacrosse

 You suddenly find yourself atop a mountain, six hundred feet high, gazing down upon the valley down below. You are in the Adirondack mountains, the heart of the Iroquois Confederacy. It is 1200 CE. Two hundred fifty Native American warriors stand at the ready, waiting for the game to commence. Each man holds a stick, approximately one meter in length, topped by a wooden loop with a pocket inside. A tree stands at either end of the “field”, marked as the goal. The sun crests over the top of your mountain’s partner, and the game begins. 

The game which you have just witnessed is called “dehuntshigwa’es” in the Onondaga language, meaning “men hit a rounded object”. Did it sound at all familiar to you? Ignoring, of course, the fact that there were 250 “athletes” and that the game had been referred to in other languages (translated) as “little war”. Dehuntshigwa’es is a precursor to the increasingly popular sport of lacrosse. 

You might ask yourself, “why did we go on that field trip?” The official reason is that I wanted you to understand from where the Iroquois Nationals’ issue arises. This will be explained shortly. 

Now jump forward 800 years to the present day. The Federation of International Lacrosse was founded twelve years ago, creating an international body under which the sport could be regulated. Among their ranks, the FIL counts such members as the United States, Canada, and… the Iroquois Confederacy. Yes, the Iroquois have their own delegation to the FIL, and they field a team, the Iroquois Nationals, for the world championships every year. And these guys are good. I’m saying that they’re currently ranked fourth in the world according to the FIL. That is a pretty freaking good rank. I’m just sayin’. 

The Iroquois Nationals logo. BADASS

Now I know that if you wanted a history lesson, you could have just gone to Wikipedia and looked all this up (confession: I did). But there’s much more to it than just history. Earlier this week, the Iroquois Nationals were denied visas by the United Kingdom. I repeat: the Iroquois Nationals were DENIED VISAS BY THE UNITED KINGDOM. Not only were they denied visas, but the US State Department was in on it too. The State Department allows the Iroquois Confederacy to issue its own passports, one of the few nations to whom they grant that power. It seems, however, that the passports aren’t worth the paper on which they’re printed. According to the New York Times, 

The State Department said Monday that federal law does not allow a tribal document to be used in lieu of a United States passport when traveling outside the United States. A spokeswoman said that an October 2008 internal directive emphasized that policy, though it noted that other countries had sometimes recognized such documents. 

Basically what they’re saying is that these tribal passports are allowed to be issued by the Iroquois Confederacy, but cannot be used to actually travel most places. Honestly, what’s the point of that? 

The real victims here are the Iroquois Nationals. They raised $300,000 to travel to the UK for the championship, and they’re currently stuck in Manhattan, unable to leave because the US State Department won’t promise to let them back in the country on a tribal passport. Seriously, these guys are ranked 4th in the WORLD, and they won’t be able to make it to a tournament to play a sport THEIR PEOPLE CREATED. It would be like stopping the Greeks from going to Brazil for the Olympics, or cutting off an American household’s cable right before the start of a football game so nobody can play armchair quarterback. It just makes no sense. 

Or maybe it does. It’s not as though the United States of America has a track record of screwing over Native Americans…

Trail of Tears. One of the many ways in which Native Americans were screwed over.

Today’s video: The Iroquois Nationals perform the “quiver dance” while entering the stadium for the U-19 World Lacrosse Tournament in Coquitlam, Canada.

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