British decision halts Iroquois lacrosse visit
NEW YORK An American Indian lacrosse team will not be allowed entry into England for the world championship of the sport the Iroquois helped invent unless members accept U.S. or Canadian passports, the British government said Wednesday.
The Iroquois Nationals team won’t be attending the tournament in Manchester unless the British government reverses its decision and allows the squad to use passports issued by the Iroquois Confederacy, said Tonya Gonnella Frichner, a lawyer for the team.
“They’re telling us: ‘Go get U.S. passports or Canadian passports,’” Frichner said Wednesday shortly after getting the news. “It’s pretty devastating.”
The team’s 23 players who are all eligible for passports issued by those nations say that accepting them would be a strike against their identity.
The team includes three Rochester Knighthawks in Sid Smith, Peter Jacobs and Craig Point. Team manager Ansley Jemison is a 1994 Canandaigua Academy graduate who is an assistant coach at St. John Fisher College.
The British government’s decision was announced hours after the U.S. cleared the team for travel on a one-time waiver at the behest of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. U.S. authorities initially had refused to accept the passports issued by the Iroquois Confederacy, which lack new security features now required for border crossings because of post-Sept. 11, 2001, crackdowns on document fraud and illegal immigration.
U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt, urged the British to reconsider.
“If the British or any national entity seeks to sever this Iroquois Nationals team from their own national identity, then they’re asking them to not be the athletes that they are,” he said in a statement, calling it an “international embarrassment” if they’re not allowed to compete.
The Iroquois team is ranked No. 4 by the Federation of International Lacrosse and represents the Haudenosaunee an Iroquois Confederacy of the Oneida, Seneca, Mohawk, Tuscarora, Cayuga and Onondaga nations.
