With support from the University of Richmond
History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

News at Home

A Missed Opportunity for Tribal Sovereignty in the Iroquois Lacrosse Battle

by Michael Leroy Oberg
Michael Leroy Oberg is Professor of History at the State University of New York, College at Geneseo, and is the author of five books including, most recently, "Native America: A History" (2010)

The Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse team had hoped to travel this week to England to participate in the 2010 World Lacrosse Championships, that sport’s version of the World Cup.  Made up of players from the Six Iroquois Nations of New York and Canada, the Iroquois Nationals travel with Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) passports, something Iroquois people have done for several decades.  This time, however, they have run afoul of authorities in England and the United States.  The British will not issue the necessary visas to the Iroquois players unless the United States Department of State guarantees in writing that it will allow individuals traveling with passports issued by a native nation to return.  So far, the United States has refused to do so.

The United States did offer to provide the Iroquois players with American passports, but the players stood on principle, asserted their people’s sovereignty, and argued that the language contained in treaties the Haudenosaunee have negotiated with the United States clearly recognize their rights as sovereign peoples.  Certainly the United States has done nothing in the recent past to prevent Haudenosaunee from traveling to international gatherings on their own passports.  Indeed, assertions of sovereignty like those demonstrated by the Nationals lacrosse team are nothing new.

In 1923, for instance, a Canadian Iroquois named Levi General traveled to the League of Nations to present his people’s grievances against what he and his supporters considered usurpations by the Canadian government.  One year later, Iroquois peoples living in the United States said “thanks, but no thanks” to the Indian Citizenship Act, a piece of legislation that made Native Americans citizens of the United States.  The Iroquois asserted that they lived on their own lands, under their own laws and institutions, and that they remained sovereign nations.  They opposed the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the landmark piece of legislation that constituted the heart of the Indians’ New Deal because they saw it as a threat to their traditional forms of government.  And in the fall of 1940, the President of the Seneca Nation of Indians, the westernmost of the Six Iroquois nations in New York State, opposed the federal Selective Service Act on the grounds that treaties his people had negotiated with the United States stated clearly that “we are a distinct race, nation and people owning, occupying, and governing the lands of our ancestors.”  The Six Nations fought conscription until a federal court ruled that the act applied to all Indians.  Still, in June of 1942, representatives of the Six Nations gathered in Syracuse to declare war on their own against the Axis Powers.  The Iroquois declared “that a state of war exists between our Confederacy on the one part and Germany, Italy, Japan and their allies against whom the United States has declared war on the other part.” Widely reported in the media, the Six Nations’ declaration of war showed that the Haudenosaunee people believed strongly in and valued greatly their sovereignty, and that they would send their young men to fight and die only in wars that they had declared themselves.

Since then, Haudenosaunee peoples have addressed the United Nations and other international bodies, traveling to these meetings on their own passports.  In word and deed, the Haudenosaunee people powerfully assert their sovereignty.  We should not be surprised that the members of the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team rejected the State Department’s condescending offer of expedited United States passports.  

As a candidate, President Obama pledged to recognize the government-to-government relationship that he said rested at the heart of America’s relations with its native population.  Though he quietly brushed aside suggestions that the United States endorse the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Obama told a large and enthusiastic audience at the Crow Indian Reservation that “my Indian policy starts with honoring the unique government-to-government relationship between tribes and the federal government and ensuring that our treaty obligations are met and that Native Americans have a voice in the White House.”  These were nice words, and native peoples supported Obama in overwhelming numbers.  The recent treatment of the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team, however, whether an intentional assault on the concept of tribal sovereignty or, more likely, the result of bungling bureaucrats behaving stupidly (a word the President has been known to throw around) shows the hollowness of that pledge.