to Cayuga faithkeeper Delmor Jacobs. Lacrosse evolved in heaven as the method to settle disputes. It was brought to Earth by the Sky Woman — the Creator’s grandmother. “As time went on, [the Sky Woman] bore a female child and when that female child grew to adulthood, a child-bearing age, she became pregnant,” Jacobs said. “We’re told she was impregnated through spirituality. She saw a person — a male — who came to her and placed two arrows across each other on her belly, and she was pregnant with twins. Even in her womb, they were fighting with each other.”
“There were people my age, older than me and younger than me, posting statuses on Facebook saying how wrong it is for girls to play lacrosse,
how it’s only a man’s game and basically that I am going to be sinned for playing it.” — Alie Jimerson, in her essay
for the US Lacrosse Native American Scholarship
These twins — the Creator, also known as
Father, and his brother, known as Uncle — were the beginning of Iroquois civilization. As the good and evil energies brought into this world, they settled their disagreements by the game passed on through the Sky Woman from the Creator’s land. Lacrosse. “Within our culture, women were the boss,”
Jacobs said. “They were the leaders of the clan. Their title was clan mother, and the clan mother was the one that uplifted the chiefs in our nation.”
PRIDE IN THE SKY Women held power and esteem, but lacrosse belonged to the men. That was the answer in 1987 and nearly again in 2006. “Why do you want to play lacrosse?” The players defended their perspective, vowed to remain true to their culture and reflected on their experiences from the previous year. They had paid their own way to play in the Cup of Nations, a festival held in conjunction with the 2005 Women’s World Cup in Annapolis, Md.
The team, called First Nations, was coached by Kim Abrams, Marshall’s sister-in-law. “We can make it,” Jemison, an assistant, remembered thinking. “We can play international lacrosse.” Then-International Federation of Women’s Lacrosse Associations (IFWLA) president Fiona Clark asked Jemison if the Iroquois could become a member nation, a status the men gained in the then-ILF in 1988. (The international governing bodies merged to form a unified FIL in 2008.) Jemison could not answer that question, of course, because “that’s a lot to ask.” The First Nations team gave Clark their Haudenosaunee flag to fly over the stadium for opening ceremonies at the U.S. Naval Academy. But because the Iroquois were not yet IFWLA members, the flag came down the next day. With that vivid image in mind — the fleeting pride of the purple-and-white flag representing the five original nations united by the Hiawatha belt, flapping in the wind — the Iroquois women pleaded their case to the council.
After much discussion, the council agreed to sanction the Haudenosaunee women’s team, but with a few stipulations. They could not play as the Iroquois Nationals, the name given to their male counterparts, and a chief’s representative would oversee their program.
50 LACROSSE MAGAZINE August 2014>> AGREE TO DISAGREE
Despite their success, the women met mixed reactions back home. Because their culture is one of oral tradition, confusion remained about how lacrosse compromised their roles within it. “I’ve been playing lacrosse since I was 15 and I’ve had three beautiful, healthy, smart children,” said Cayuga nation member Tia Schindler, manager of the Haudenosaunee U19 team, whose husband, Gewas Schindler, is the son of Onondaga chief Peter Sky and general manager of the Iroquois Nationals. “My grandmother played lacrosse. My mother played lacrosse. So I’m the third-generation lacrosse player — a woman lacrosse player. “I can respect where people in my generation or the generation before me are coming from. They’re only listening to the people who have passed down their knowledge. But at the same time, it’d be nice if there was just an agree-to-disagree type of thing.” Albany-bound Alie Jimerson, recipient of the 2014 US Lacrosse Native American Scholarship, acknowledged women have a negative power counteracting the medicine game. In her essay, this Cayuga native wrote “that the menstruation in women [known as their moon time] would kill this medicine for our men. Women are not allowed to play the traditional medicine game and are not even allowed to touch a lacrosse stick played in one; however, some people think we shouldn’t even touch any stick.”
Jimerson realized how strong that sentiment was when trying out for the 2011 Haudenosaunee U19 team. She was 14 at the time. “There were people my age, older than me and
younger than me, posting statuses on Facebook saying how wrong it is for girls to play lacrosse and how it is only a men’s game,” she wrote, “and basically that I am going to be sinned for playing it.” Being at the Tewaaraton ceremony, where Lyle and Miles Thompson became the first co-winners and Native American recipients of college lacrosse’s highest honor, motivated Jimerson “to prove that we can do something with lacrosse and we, Native American girls, can go far,” she said afterward. Jimerson, who played varsity lacrosse at Lake Shore (N.Y.) High since eighth grade, amassed more than 200 goals and 100 assists in her career. She plans to major in business administration and minor in health services so she can return to the Cayuga reservation and improve its health department.
A Publication of US Lacrosse
In 2007, Syracuse goalie Amber Hill, of the
Tuscarora tribe, became the first known Native American woman to play in the NCAA tournament. That summer, the Haudenosaunee played in the under-19 women’s world championship in Ontario. Finally, Iroquois women had the opportunity to travel the world playing lacrosse, representing their sovereign nation. They sent teams to the 2009 World Cup in the Czech Republic and the 2011 U19 championship in Germany. Last year, the Haudenosaunee returned to the
World Cup in Ontario and finished in seventh place, the most improved among 19 nations.
©GAMEDAY PHOTOGRAPHY; ©JC PINHEIRO; ©CLAUDIA JIMERSON
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