Post by blackcrowheart on Sept 27, 2006 17:46:25 GMT -5
The Creator's Game
By Josh Chapman
The McGill Daily
Josh Chapman / The McGill Daily
2006, Montreal
Both have lacrosse teams.
But the team from the Kahnawake Mohawk reservation on Montreal’s South Shore is only beginning to relearn a version of the sport that is closer to the one their ancestors authored centuries ago. Their McGill counterparts, only 30 minutes away, may have something to teach them about the sport that was co-opted by white culture.
Last Monday, at Molson Stadium, the Redmen lacrosse team and the Kahnawake team played a game of lacrosse, the fourth such exhibition game in under a year.
The inaugural McGill-Kahnawake game, played last October, ended with a 17-14 McGill win. It was a close game that saw a fourth quarter McGill comeback after the Mohawk team dominated the third frame.
Kahnawake’s performance caught many off-guard. The team had only practiced together twice. Most of the players were unfamiliar with field lacrosse, having grown up, like in other Canadian communities, playing box lacrosse, an indoor version of the game played on thawed hockey rinks.
Jamie Kirby, a Kahnawake player and coach, is responsible for the return of the outdoor game to the Mohawk reservation.
“I’m trying to open the eyes of the other native communities” to the field version of the sport, he says of the version that is enjoying a resurgence in Canada.
For McGill head coach Tim Murdoch, the games are another way to return to the roots of the sport.
“It’s a great team to play because of the tradition, the history, the quality of the players, and the skill they bring to the table,” he says. “To me this is a lot more than a game of lacrosse with these guys. I have a lot to learn about their culture. I’m trying to learn through the game of lacrosse.”
Despite being a hybrid of the traditional native sport rooted in ritual and warfare and the sport’s Euro-American codification, modern lacrosse has a history and tradition that has been marked by conflict and overt racism.
1867, Montreal
July 1, 1867, saw the confederation of the Dominion of Canada, the declaration of lacrosse as Canada’s national sport by an act of Parliament, and a Kahnawake victory over the Montreal Lacrosse Club by a score of 3-2 in the first ever Dominion lacrosse title match.
Two years later, Dr. William George Beers, a Montreal dentist, wrote the first set of rules for the modern game in his publication “The Laws of Lacrosse.”
Despite Beers’s high regard for natives’ lacrosse skills (Beers would routinely visit Kahnawake and Akwesasne Native reserves to research the game), the codified game excluded First Nations players from the start. Section six, rule nine, of Beers’s manual reads: “No Indian must play in a match for a white club, unless previously agreed upon.”
However, competition between reserve teams and white clubs was common during the mid-19th century. Native teams would routinely beat white teams and controlled the Dominion championship for its first decade.
But in 1880, the National Lacrosse Association of Canada ruled that only amateurs could play. Amateurism, a Victorian notion of sports excellence for its own sake, was the wedge that effectively ended native participation in Canada’s new national sport. White clubs would charge dues to their middle- and upper-class members, who could afford to pay for grounds, clubhouses, and socials.
This effectively excluded the poverty-stricken native teams from competition since the notions of amateurism precluded the customary $50 per match payment that players often used to defray travel costs.
Gentlemen’s clubs soon came to disregard amateur rules prohibiting collection of admission fees and compensation for games. The Montreal Amateur Lacrosse Association minutes from 1894 record payments of up to $1,200 for games with teams from British Columbia, and game posters from 1909 advertise rates of 50 cents for general admission, 75 cents for the grandstand, and $1 for a chair. In that year, the supposedly amateur players could make hundreds of dollars per season, while one noted amateur, “Cyclone” Taylor of the New Westminster Salmonbellies, commanded a salary of nearly $2,000.
Native players, meanwhile, were exhibited at fairs and “Wild West” shows. Beers himself took a team from the Kahnawake Mohawk reserve to London and Paris in 1876. The Mohawks faced a team of Montreal amateurs in a match before Queen Victoria on June 26, after tea. Native players would often be engaged as entertainers as well as athletes, and have to perform “war dances” for a public excited to see “noble savages” from the frontier, as that same frontier and the peoples beyond it were pushed back by American and British westward expansion.
2006, Canada
While native teams continue to play on reservations, they have only gradually started participating in leagues with white teams again. Today, the Six Nations Arrows team from a reservation in Southwestern Ontario is the only native team that competes in the top Junior A division of the Ontario Lacrosse Association.
Though minor league teams from Akwesasne, Kahnawake, and the Six Nations reservation compete in the Ontario Lacrosse Association today, the ethnic division of lacrosse clubs continues. Native athletes are a rare sight on teams not based on a reservation mostly due to the austere terms of Canada’s Indian Act, which requires natives to stay on reserves to keep their “Indian status.”
Internationally, it was only in the 1990 World Lacrosse Championships in Perth, Australia that the International Lacrosse Federation allowed the Iroquois nation, the game’s initial authors, to compete for the first time.
At Molson Stadium this month, McGill defeated Kahnawake 10-4. Kirby, the player-coach, says that the score doesn’t bother him.
“We got to relearn it. As natives, we should be the ones dominating, I think,” he says with a laugh. “Hopefully we will in the future. We’re 0-4 against McGill now, but I see the potential.”
By Josh Chapman
The McGill Daily
Josh Chapman / The McGill Daily
2006, Montreal
Both have lacrosse teams.
But the team from the Kahnawake Mohawk reservation on Montreal’s South Shore is only beginning to relearn a version of the sport that is closer to the one their ancestors authored centuries ago. Their McGill counterparts, only 30 minutes away, may have something to teach them about the sport that was co-opted by white culture.
Last Monday, at Molson Stadium, the Redmen lacrosse team and the Kahnawake team played a game of lacrosse, the fourth such exhibition game in under a year.
The inaugural McGill-Kahnawake game, played last October, ended with a 17-14 McGill win. It was a close game that saw a fourth quarter McGill comeback after the Mohawk team dominated the third frame.
Kahnawake’s performance caught many off-guard. The team had only practiced together twice. Most of the players were unfamiliar with field lacrosse, having grown up, like in other Canadian communities, playing box lacrosse, an indoor version of the game played on thawed hockey rinks.
Jamie Kirby, a Kahnawake player and coach, is responsible for the return of the outdoor game to the Mohawk reservation.
“I’m trying to open the eyes of the other native communities” to the field version of the sport, he says of the version that is enjoying a resurgence in Canada.
For McGill head coach Tim Murdoch, the games are another way to return to the roots of the sport.
“It’s a great team to play because of the tradition, the history, the quality of the players, and the skill they bring to the table,” he says. “To me this is a lot more than a game of lacrosse with these guys. I have a lot to learn about their culture. I’m trying to learn through the game of lacrosse.”
Despite being a hybrid of the traditional native sport rooted in ritual and warfare and the sport’s Euro-American codification, modern lacrosse has a history and tradition that has been marked by conflict and overt racism.
1867, Montreal
July 1, 1867, saw the confederation of the Dominion of Canada, the declaration of lacrosse as Canada’s national sport by an act of Parliament, and a Kahnawake victory over the Montreal Lacrosse Club by a score of 3-2 in the first ever Dominion lacrosse title match.
Two years later, Dr. William George Beers, a Montreal dentist, wrote the first set of rules for the modern game in his publication “The Laws of Lacrosse.”
Despite Beers’s high regard for natives’ lacrosse skills (Beers would routinely visit Kahnawake and Akwesasne Native reserves to research the game), the codified game excluded First Nations players from the start. Section six, rule nine, of Beers’s manual reads: “No Indian must play in a match for a white club, unless previously agreed upon.”
However, competition between reserve teams and white clubs was common during the mid-19th century. Native teams would routinely beat white teams and controlled the Dominion championship for its first decade.
But in 1880, the National Lacrosse Association of Canada ruled that only amateurs could play. Amateurism, a Victorian notion of sports excellence for its own sake, was the wedge that effectively ended native participation in Canada’s new national sport. White clubs would charge dues to their middle- and upper-class members, who could afford to pay for grounds, clubhouses, and socials.
This effectively excluded the poverty-stricken native teams from competition since the notions of amateurism precluded the customary $50 per match payment that players often used to defray travel costs.
Gentlemen’s clubs soon came to disregard amateur rules prohibiting collection of admission fees and compensation for games. The Montreal Amateur Lacrosse Association minutes from 1894 record payments of up to $1,200 for games with teams from British Columbia, and game posters from 1909 advertise rates of 50 cents for general admission, 75 cents for the grandstand, and $1 for a chair. In that year, the supposedly amateur players could make hundreds of dollars per season, while one noted amateur, “Cyclone” Taylor of the New Westminster Salmonbellies, commanded a salary of nearly $2,000.
Native players, meanwhile, were exhibited at fairs and “Wild West” shows. Beers himself took a team from the Kahnawake Mohawk reserve to London and Paris in 1876. The Mohawks faced a team of Montreal amateurs in a match before Queen Victoria on June 26, after tea. Native players would often be engaged as entertainers as well as athletes, and have to perform “war dances” for a public excited to see “noble savages” from the frontier, as that same frontier and the peoples beyond it were pushed back by American and British westward expansion.
2006, Canada
While native teams continue to play on reservations, they have only gradually started participating in leagues with white teams again. Today, the Six Nations Arrows team from a reservation in Southwestern Ontario is the only native team that competes in the top Junior A division of the Ontario Lacrosse Association.
Though minor league teams from Akwesasne, Kahnawake, and the Six Nations reservation compete in the Ontario Lacrosse Association today, the ethnic division of lacrosse clubs continues. Native athletes are a rare sight on teams not based on a reservation mostly due to the austere terms of Canada’s Indian Act, which requires natives to stay on reserves to keep their “Indian status.”
Internationally, it was only in the 1990 World Lacrosse Championships in Perth, Australia that the International Lacrosse Federation allowed the Iroquois nation, the game’s initial authors, to compete for the first time.
At Molson Stadium this month, McGill defeated Kahnawake 10-4. Kirby, the player-coach, says that the score doesn’t bother him.
“We got to relearn it. As natives, we should be the ones dominating, I think,” he says with a laugh. “Hopefully we will in the future. We’re 0-4 against McGill now, but I see the potential.”