Lacrosse Comes Home

The Onondaga Nation hosts the World Indoor Lacrosse Championships

Miles Thompson of the Iroquois Nationals waits for Canada to come back onto the field.

SYRACUSE, N.Y.—Fans still stretch their arms toward players as the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team passes by, hoping for a high-five or an autograph.

Despite taking silver to Canada’s gold at the World Indoor Lacrosse Championships in September, family and supporters from across Indian Country hold a sense of pride for the team they see as winners.

“Lacrosse is our roots,” says Bradley Powless (Onondaga), a member of the Onondaga Nation Council. “We’re lacrosse people.”

That was never more evident than at the championships, which were hosted by the Onondaga Nation. It was the first international sporting competition held on Indigenous lands. The Iroquois Nationals are the only Indigenous team competing internationally as a sovereign nation.

The game of lacrosse comes from the Haudenosaunee people, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, which consists of six nations: Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora. It is a sacred sport they call the Creator’s game.

Lacrosse plays a vital role in the lives of Haudenosaunee people. Find out more and see highlights from the lacrosse championships in this video by Jourdan Bennett-Begaye.

In addition to the Iroquois and Canada, lacrosse teams from the United States, Israel, England, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Australia, Finland, Turkey, Germany, Serbia and Switzerland competed. The Iroquois were victorious against the U.S.A. (twice), England and Czech Republic teams, but fell to Canada—an undefeated club—twice in tightly contested battles. Canada has won the WILC cup—and the Nationals have taken second—four consecutive years.

“It’s definitely an honor for, first of all, the game coming here, being right here in my hometown community, Onondaga Nation, and having it being here in Syracuse,” Iroquois Nationals midfielder Jeremy Thompson (Onondaga) says.

This was the first tournament where the four Thompson brothers—Jeremy, Haina, Miles and Lyle—played together; it was rarer still that the competition was held in the backyard of the community they grew up in. After this year’s games, Lyle Thompson was named to the All-World Team after scoring a tournament total of 30 points.

Nationals head coach Rich Kilgour says the Thompson brothers have inspired legions of Native youth.

“… [W]e play this here in 2015, there’s little 7- and 8-year-olds in the stands saying, ‘I want to be the next Thompson Brother.’ In 10 years, those kids are 18, 19, 20. They’re the next ones coming up,” Kilgour says. “…

[T]hese guys set a great example.”

With the tournament theme of “Lacrosse is Coming Home,” the Haudenosaunee worked for nearly a year to ensure their sovereign lands could accommodate an international affair.

In 2010, the Iroquois sparked controversy when their nation’s passport and tribal documents weren’t accepted by officials in England, which was hosting the tournament that year. The Iroquois team refused to use U.S. or Canadian passports, as they did not want to travel to an international tournament on a foreign nation’s passport. They were unable to play that year.

As the host nation for this year’s international tournament, the Onondaga Nation stamped the passport books of visitors entering their sovereign lands to great fanfare. In addition, the Onondaga built a new arena specifically for the games, which now serves as a community athletic complex. 

Jourdan Bennett-Begaye (Diné) is a writer and co-founder of Survival of the First Voices Festival in Farmington, N.M. She currently attends Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications under the Newhouse Minorities Fellowship. Follow her on Twitter @jourdanbb.