FUEL
IMPACT
“I wanted whoever played to understand the background and history of the game,” Thompson said. “I wanted to make it as close to a medicine game as possible.” Thompson decided to visit Standing Rock in November, after he and his wife saw clashes between protestors and authorities escalating from peaceful confrontations into violence. They marked a dangerous apex to months of protests over plans to run the Dakota Access Pipeline below the Missouri River near Sioux land. On Nov. 21, the Thompsons left Syracuse in a rented SUV.
For his part in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, Florida Launch attackman Lyle Thompson staged a medicine game with wooden sticks he brought with him to the North Dakota plains.
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grass lay flat, with no markings, no goal, nothing but the sign to indicate lacrosse could be played here. But for Thompson, the field might have been the most meaningful one he’s ever graced. “For us as Native Americans, the way we view the game growing up is kind of the way we view life,” Thompson said. “I felt like using the power of my fan base in lacrosse to let people know what’s going on [at Standing Rock]. No one was talking about it. It’s something I care about and something I want to be part of.”
Thompson visited Standing Rock in late November with his family, teammate and business manager Bill O’Brien and his college coach,
14 US LACROSSE MAGAZINE January 2017
Albany’s Scott Marr. Both Thompson and O’Brien are Onondaga, while Marr, who is white, has steadily recruited Onondaga players to Albany since arriving 15 years ago, including eight who currently are on his roster. The group drove 30 hours from upstate New York with two goals in mind: one, aimed at lacrosse audiences far from Native Americans issues, to bring attention to the Standing Rock protests and the resurgent identity movement it has spawned within Native American culture; and two, for the protesters themselves, to ensure that lacrosse’s roots as a Native American medicine game would be present at the protests.
“It was a tight ride,” O’Brien said. As it happened, the most violent night of protests occurred during the group’s 30-hour overnight trip. As they drove, Thompson’s group received updates of authorities turning water cannons on protesters and deploying tear gas in sub-freezing temperatures. Once near the site, the group had to negotiate a National Guard roadblock, finding a back way into the main camp near the Missouri River. Along the main driveway, Thompson said, nearly 100 flagpoles flew the flags of Native nations represented in the camp. On a walking tour of the camp, Marr said, it was clear that some of the protestors were in for the long haul. “It was no joke. Those people are hunkered down,” he said. “They got their teepee up, they’re building long houses and they’re not going anywhere.” At a sacred fire near the camp’s hub, the group joined an ad hoc leadership meeting where elders from many tribes spoke in turn, debating camp plans. Thompson spoke briefly to the group, in both English and his native language, about his grandfather’s role as a spiritual leader in the Onondaga nation and the place a medicine game of lacrosse might play in the camp. The group also visited a designated sacred ground within the camp, where protestors gathered to pray. “We met two guys in the Sioux who were direct decedents of Chief Red Cloud,” Thompson said.
Red Cloud, a chief in the late 1800s, holds a founding fatherly place among the Sioux.
USlacrosse.org
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