I've played against the Iroquois nationals in three world championships. while very bruising they are fabulously creative on the field, really a joy to play and watch and lacrosse runs through their blood.
Lacrosse is not the same without them since they formed their first national team. I would suggest watching Spirit Game: pride of a nation (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5195438/) that captures some of their history.
The film also follows the 2015 world indoor lacrosse championships. this was the first international tournament played on Iroquois land. Al Gore and Jim Brown (the latter having played lacrosse at college) both attended to watch the finals and dine with all the players.
The lacrosse community are behind their inclusion.
The case of the Iroquois and lacrosse is really the only case I'm aware of where the issue of indigenous peoples being represented under their own nation would actually make a meaningful difference in how competitions would go.
Naturally, the Iroquois have used this to drive some more publicity for their sovereignty claims--in particular, they insist on using their passports when traveling internationally. While I'm sure the US and Canadian governments aren't happy about this, they have both ultimately said "yes, we will let them back in on these passports."
Their exclusion here appears to be because Olympic rules are that dependent nations are not allowed to to participate under their own flag, except those that had an existing committee 30 years ago. I think those rules are a mistake, and the organizers here should override those rules to let the Iroquois compete. If (perhaps when) lacrosse becomes an Olympic sport, this issue is going to become even more important, and I would hope that both the US and Canada would campaign to admit the Iroquois as nation in its own right when playing in the Olympics.
The World Games is sort of the Olympics' El Ocho - a competition between national teams in sports that aren't quite big enough to be in the Olympics. As such, they follow the Olympics' principles for recognising entrants, which require entrants to be states, rather than just nations (mostly [1]). Hence, neither the Iroquois nor the Scots get to enter a team of their own (in Olympic rugby sevens, Scots are part of the GB team).
So, the Iroquois don't get to enter a team in the World Games, despite inventing the sport. The Scots don't get to enter a golf team for the Olympics either.
This is a fantastic point. The commentary about the passports is really a sideshow: if other nations that are part of a larger state are allowed to participate, so should the Iroquois.
The passport thing is interesting. I'd never heard of it. However https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois_passport makes it sound like there is less recognition than the article implies. The wikipedia article makes it sound like canada and usa begrudgingly accept it sometimes but not often because it doesn't really matter that much but they want to avoid the bad PR of rejecting.
In the context of lacrosse, it's sad that a First Nations team wouldn't be welcome to compete, since they are arguably closer to the game and more passionate about it than any other nation.
Fun fact, for those unfamiliar with lacrosse: Canada has two national sports: hockey is our national winter sport, while lacrosse is our national summer sport.[1] Most Canadians have probably still never played it, which is a shame because it's at least as amazing to watch or play as hockey. Field or box.
It seems that this is due to questions about sovereignty. However, Puerto Rico has competed in the Olympics since 1948, even though it is a territory of the United States and its residents are citizens of the United States, and travel internationally under US Passports. It seems the Haudenosaunee who travel under their own passports have at least as good a claim to sovereignty as Puerto Rico and should be allowed to compete.
Another comment mentions that exceptions made to recognize those areas' athletic commissions more than 30 years ago were grandfathered in.
This really seems like a case where you ought to either ignore the rules, change the rules, or investigate if the Iroquois had some athletic body that ought to have been recognized 30 years ago and correct that oversight. What harm does letting the creators of the game play under their own banner do?
Just off the top of my head, I was able to think of not just Puerto Rico and Taiwan, but also Palestine and Kosovo, as examples of "interesting edge cases" when it comes to sovereignty, national recognition, and Olympic participation. Kosovo and Palestine, at least, aren't in there because of a 30-year grandfathering, and their recognition is far from universal; the IOC or the IWGA would certainly be able to accept a Haudenosaunee team if they were so inclined.
The Haudenosaunee (incorrectly referred to as the Iroquois) have a fascinating and complex legal system. This video explained the system and how it came to be. Highly recommend for anyone interested in legal systems or history in general
> The Haudenosaunee (incorrectly referred to as the Iroquois)
As far as I'm aware, Iroquois is considered an acceptable name for Haudenosaunee, much as the country known to its inhabitants as Magyarország is known to the rest of the world by a name that is not anything close to that.
Note that the men's team is the Iroquois Nationals, but the women's team is the Haudenosaunee women's team.
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
Also, note that the guidelines are pretty expansive in terms of what is on-topic:
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
as an MIT course 6 alum, I object more vigorously to this outrageous over-inclusive use of the term "hacker" than I do to the exclusion of the Iroquois, which I also fully decry.
Lacrosse is not the same without them since they formed their first national team. I would suggest watching Spirit Game: pride of a nation (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5195438/) that captures some of their history.
The film also follows the 2015 world indoor lacrosse championships. this was the first international tournament played on Iroquois land. Al Gore and Jim Brown (the latter having played lacrosse at college) both attended to watch the finals and dine with all the players.
The lacrosse community are behind their inclusion.