Inside Lacrosse Magazine
2006 Spring v.8 issue #1
By Ryan Whirty
It’s about 10 p.m. on a Friday night in March, and the host Rochester Nighthawks have just obliterated the visiting Philadelphia Wings, 16-7, in a National Lacrosse League showdown in front of more than 9,000 fans. In the bowels of Rochester’s Blue Cross Arena, the K-Hawks’ locker room is filled with blaring music and guys unwinding from what was, by all accounts, a totally dominating performance.
One of those defenders, Marshall Abrams, fresh out of a shower and dressed in his street clothes, stands in lip flops holding a massive duffle bag. At this point he’s about 100 miles away from the Onondaga Nation, the reservation where he grew up and where he still claims citizenship.
Similarly, the modern lacrosse game Abrams just played – with its enclosed, artificial playing surface, state of the art titanium sticks, and blaring rock music during play – is in many ways miles and eons away from the game his Iroquois ancestors played centuries ago, huge outdoor fields and sometimes dozens o men to a side.
That’s because Abrams is an Iroquois, and because of that, the sport of lacrosse, regardless of what modern form it takes, is an integral part o his heritage and culture. “Kids grow up playing it,” he says of life on the reservation. “It’s a big part of our way of life.”
And because lacrosse means so much to him and his fellow Onondaga, Abrams has embraced the chance to play for the Iroquois Nationals, the only Native sports team in the world sanctioned to play in international competition as its own nation.
“There’s definitely a lot of pride, because we’re playing for a lot of people,” he says. “We leave everything on the field because it is an honor to play.”
And because the privilege of representing their people on a world stage means so much to them, the members of the Iroquois team persevere even though the organization often lacks the type of funding and infrastructure needed to practice and prepare as much as other international squads.
This year’s World Games carry added importance for the Iroquois: the event is being held in London, Ontario, very close to several Iroquois reservations and almost making it a home event for the Nationals. The team is also looking to medal for the first time in its history, an achievement that would bring untold awareness to today’s young lacrosse players about the origins of the game.
With a chance to accomplish such a goal in virtually in their own backyard, Abrams and the rest of the Nationals are investing tremendous time, energy and spirit in their preparation for the World Games. The sport of lacrosse simply means too much for their culture for them to give any less.
For nearly a quarter-century, the Iroquois Nationals have been international ambassadors for the game of lacrosse. Every time they play, members feel, they are passing on knowledge of the mystical origins of a game they believe was given to them by the Creator.
“There are kids today who step on the field and never know it is a Native American sport,” says longtime team member Scott Burnam.
Formed in 1983 to draw together the best players from the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy – Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora – the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team marked an historic turning point in 1990, when the International Lacrosse Federation accepted the Iroquois as a full member nation. The move allowed the Iroquois to play as equals in all international competition, including the World Lacrosse Championships.
Since the ’90 World Games in Perth, Australia, says team board member and acting executive director Leo Nolan, the Nationals and their sense of tradition have helped galvanize what he calls, “the huge brotherhood of players” that exists across the lacrosse world. “Because of that,” he says, “I think we are very welcome [in world play], and other countries are very enthused about our participation.”
International lacrosse officials definitely agree.
“The Iroquois team brings to international lacrosse a sense of history, heritage and tradition,” says ILF President Peter Hobbs. “In these times of extreme international competition in business and sport, it is critical for the survival of sports that they retain their reason for being. For us, it is that heritage and tradition. We exist as a result of the efforts of our forebears and for the benefit of our descendants.”
But while the Iroquois have brought tradition to the World Games, they’ve also brought game: in both 1998 and 2002 the Nationals finished forth, behind the U.S., Canada and Australia. But for team players and officials, the bar is now set even higher. Says Nolan: “To be quite honest, we always have high expectations.”
The people who make up the modern day Six Nations, or Haudenosaunee (“People of the Longhouse”), have been playing lacrosse for centuries. And for centuries, lacrosse has represented so much more than fun and games to them. In many Native American villages, lacrosse became a surrogate battle, with potentially bloody wars between clans being replaced by winner-take-all games that settled scores and often kept the peace.
For the Iroquois, lacrosse [or dehuntshigwa’es] was – and still is – nothing less than divine, a loving gift from the Creator. In addition to resolving conflicts, lacrosse often took on medicinal overtones, with games serving as healing rituals that restored the physical and spiritual strength of the people.
Games were frequently accompanied by ceremonies designed to bless the game and to heal a sick member of the clan. Dehuntshigwa’es players were revered as mighty warriors, and participants frequently sought out respected shamans to exert spiritual influence in their favor.
In his book, American Indian Lacrosse, Thomas Vennum asserts that the exact way the Iroquois traditional game morphed into the modern game is somewhat unclear and undocumented. However, as the Iroquois – as well as other countless other Native American cultures across the continent – began to play for and against white settlers who became amored with the game, white influences began to creep into the Iroquois’ style. Soon the Iroquois began to don footwear and team jerseys, especially when they played against white teams that played a more regulated form of lacrosse.
But over the years, Iroquois players earned the respect of many white observers and participants. Iroquois lore is filled with stories of great lacrosse figures, such as Agnes Thomas, a St. Regis Mohawk whose most unearthly shot broke ribs and knocked goalies off their feet, and Oren Lyons, a two-time All America an member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame who played with Jim Brown at Syracuse University and became the patriarch of the Iroquois Nationals program.
But almost to a man, all Iroquois players learned the game as children, practically from birth, which is one of the characteristics of Dehuntshigwa’es that survives to this day. Burnam recalls that practically everyone played as young Mohawks, and former player and board member Dave Bray notes that kids as young as five carry their sticks around to form an emotional and spiritual connection to it. Because of that, Bray says, “Our players play with more spirit.”
Because lacrosse holds such a deep, lifelong and sacred place in their culture, Iroquois of all ages revere the gift that the Creator gave them. Says current Iroquois coach Ron Doctor, “It is difficult to explain (the game’s) spiritual importance to the Iroquois people.”
What is also difficult too explain, at least in the eyes of many Iroquois, is why, before the 1980s, they had traditionally been left out of international play. For some Iroquois leaders and players, it was almost and insult that the world lacrosse officials left out the originators of the game. “We should have been invited,” says Nolan. “We should not have had to ask.”
That decades-long snub eventually stirred a grass roots movement among the Six Nations to rectify the situation. Because the reservations of the Six Nations exist as sovereign political entities – citizens of the Six Nations, for example, carry a Haudenosaunee passport – many felt that they had the right to be represented as a sovereign nation on a world stage.
Once the team was formed in the early 1980s and then officially sanctioned by the ILF in 1990, the Iroquois Nationals started to grow. Representing a total of roughly 70,000 people living in communities in New York, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and the Canadian Provinces of Ontario and Quebec, the National’s member ship is open to any Haudenosaunee who is an enrolled citizen of the Six Nations. Because Iroquois clans are matriarchal, Nolan says men are eligible if their mothers are enrolled Haudenosaunee citizens.
But such strict eligibility guidelines create perhaps the biggest obstacle for the Nationals; a limited talent pool. While teams from the U.S., Canada, and other countries can draw from their entire population, the Iroquois must choose from a group that numbers in the tens of thousands.
“The United States has a few hundred thousand players to choose from,” Nolan says. “We don’t even have 100,000 Haudenosaunee.”
Doctor, the team’s current coach, also notes that the Iroquois don’t have enough funding to allow the squad to play together year round between editions of the World games, held every four years. Burnam notes that at the 1998 World games in Baltimore, Md., the Nationals didn’t have a full team until the last player arrived at halftime of the first game.
Financial and other limitations have also prevented the Nationals from having a firm practice schedule or training regimen. “But,” Doctor adds, “We are trying to strengthen this area.”
But while the Nationals must cope with a limited player pool and financial restrictions, they’re strengthened by a closeness that springs from a shared cultural tradition. Nolan says, “A cadre of players who make up the core of the team” has in the past galvanized the unit. He adds that those core players understand and accept the responsibility that comes with being a National – a responsibility not only to play well, but to act as representatives of the culture they hold dear.
“The Nationals are basically an outgrowth of the sovereignty we believe we enjoy in this country,” Nolan says. “It is a continuation of the way we feel about ourselves. It means so much too every single one of our communities. It’s our national sport, and it’s and integral part of our culture and the way of life we always had.”
As a result the players who take on that responsibility exhibit the same type of honor that Abrams does when he plays for the Knighthawks. “Anyone would say the opportunity to represent your nation carries a tremendous amount of pride,” Burnam says. “You can’t really put into words how meaningful it was to put on that uniform for that first game.”
Since his first game, Burnam has donned his Nationals uniform countless times, but he feels he might put it on for the last time at the World Games in July. The 37-year-old says he will retire after the games are over, and as a result, he wants more than ever to crack the top three.
“I’m a competitor,” he says. “I would have hoped to have medaled (at previous World Games), but I do feel we earned some respect the last time around. Hopefully this time around will bring us a medal.”
To that end, Burnam notes, the Iroquois plan to employ a longer, more thorough selection process and then, once the team is assembled, to practice more as a unit more than the squad has done in the past. Doctor says the team is hoping to play some
exhibitions in late May and early June, and Nolan says such preparation will be crucial to the team’s chances in London.
“The more the team plays together, the better they will play as a team,” he says. “You have to click as a team. You have to have more opportunities to play as a team, and that’s one of our biggest issues.”
In addition, both Doctor and board member Bray note that more and more Iroquois are playing at all levels of box and field lacrosse, creating what Doctor calls, “A nucleus of players who have experience at high levels of play.”
Among the more well-known players expected to suit up for the Iroquois this summer are Abrams, Matt Alexander and Brett Bucktooth from Syracuse University, Delby Powless from Rutgers, Neal Powless from Nazareth College, and Gewas Schindler from Loyola. Aside from Bucktooth, a senior All-America candidate for the orange, all have played at least one version of professional lacrosse.
For these reasons, those involved with the team feel the Nationals might be on the verge of turning the corner. “IT’S going to be a good competition. The players have the potential to play at that level.”
Adds Nolan: “we’ve done fairly well, but not to our potential. If we get our best players and gel as a team, we have an excellent chance of doing something good.”
But even beyond wins and loses Nolan and other Iroquois hope that the Nationals’ presence in London will achieve perhaps a bigger goal: to share their traditions with players and fans from around the world. Burnam feels that the process has to large extent already taken place: he says that “international players” like the Japanese and the Czechs, know more about the origins of the game than the U.S. players do.”
Tim Hobbs, the Chairman of the London games, says championship officials are hoping to involve local Native American groups in the opening and closing ceremonies. A Native presence is crucial, he says to help the modern-day game retain its traditions.
“As you become more commercialized,” he says, “people might forget about the roots of the game. Having the Iroquois Nationals participating keeps the credibility of the games and creates interest all over the world. It’s important we don’t forget where the game came from and understand the tradition of the game and what it means to Native peoples.”
But in some ways, non-Haudenosaunee players will never completely understand what lacrosse means to the Iroquois because, as Doctor and others note, the spiritual depth at which their people play, feel the game is almost indescribable. Non-Iroquois may never fully understand what it means to ask a medicine man to bless the game you are about to play, play in bare feet or feel a wooden shaft in your hands.
These things, as Vennum says, are part of the magic: a magic lying just below the surface.