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Albany, Iroquois men have forged a path from the Six Nations to the U.S. collegiate ranks, honoring a game rooted in their native traditions. They left their reservations with lacrosse scholarships in hand and returned as role models.


W


But what about their sisters and cousins, mothers and aunts? That’s a loaded question. In 2006, an all-Iroquois women’s team stood before the Six Nations Confederacy Council in Ontario seeking permission to join the international lacrosse community as representatives of the Haudenosaunee, or people of the longhouse. “Why do you want to play lacrosse?” One by one they answered. “I love the game.”


“I want to be able to play in other parts of the


country and in the world.” “I want to get a good education.”


Sandy Jemison nodded proudly with each response. It had been 19 years since the Iroquois women last attempted to organize like this. Jemison was a member of a fledgling all-Iroquois women’s team that in 1987 tried to play an exhibition game in Syracuse, N.Y. The Onondaga clan mothers threatened to lie down on the field in protest. Rather than defy the elders, the team disbanded.


THE POWER WITHIN To the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida,


Tuscarora and Mohawk — the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy that once populated most of present-day New York — lacrosse is a gift from the Creator to be played by men for healing purposes. It’s the medicine game. Because of its deep, spiritual significance, women are not even allowed to touch a wooden stick. It’s sacrilege. Iroquois communities are matriarchal societies, passing on the lineage through the mother. In Onondaga, lacrosse is called Deyhontsigwa’ehs, which means, “to bump hips.” Powless, the son of Onondaga Chief Irving Powless Jr. and assistant director of the Native Student Program at Syracuse University, said the Iroquois revere women as procreators for their people and keepers of their lineage.


“The power really lies within the women in the community and the clan mothers themselves,” Powless said. “It doesn’t make sense to have a woman play a sport with the men when the name of the sport itself is about being rough and being physical. What is the most important gift that they have? The gift of life.” Women and lacrosse both play significant roles in the Haudenosaunee creation story, according


A Publication of US Lacrosse August 2014 >> LACROSSE MAGAZINE 49


hy do you want to play lacrosse?


Nowhere is that question more important than in Native American communities.


From Neal Powless at Nazareth to Marshall Abrams at Syracuse and the Thompsons at


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