U.S. officials agree to honor Haudenosaunee passports, but Canada and Britain won't recognize them.
View full sizeJeanne Shenandoah is in charge of issuing Haudenosaunee passports like this one for the Onondaga Nation. The Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team members are citizens of the Onondaga Nation and other tribal nations, and have been traveling with the passports since 1977. They consider it an affront to their sovereignty for Britain to refuse to recognize their native documents. Editor's note: This story was written by staff writers Mike McAndrew and John Mariani, with contributions from Mark Weiner.
Syracuse, NY -- Despite daylong diplomatic negotiations in Washington, D.C., and New York, the World Lacrosse Championship will begin in England today without the people who invented the game.
The Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team remained stuck in New York City Wednesday night because of a passport dispute. That put today’s opening game in great doubt, but the team still held hopes of eventually getting to England.
The Native American team — which has traveled on Haudenosaunee passports issued by the Onondaga Nation for two decades — has been trying to get to England since Sunday.
The State Department agreed Wednesday to issue one-time waivers that would allow team members born in the United States to return to the United States without U.S. passports. But team members could not wrangle a similar deal with the Canadian consulate before their 4 p.m. flight left from John F. Kennedy Airport for Amsterdam. Half the team is from the Canadian side of the border.
British authorities also would not recognize the State Department waivers as valid travel documents, according to Rep. Dan Maffei’s office, which is helping the team. The British will only recognize U.S.- or Canadian-issued passports. “Clearly this is not a security issue. It’s an issue of bureaucracy,” Maffei said.
That leaves the team — made up of 23 players from the Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, Seneca, Mohawk and Tuscarora nations who are unwilling to travel on U.S. passports — stranded while members of Congress, U.S. lawyers and others lobby Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Obama administration officials.
On Wednesday afternoon, the team bus pulled up to the terminal at JFK, then pulled away shortly afterward; the team never got off. “This is the first time we’ve had this issue. We’ve traveled (on these passports) 27 years,” said Ansley Jemison, the team’s general manager.
Tighter borders since Sept. 11
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States and other countries have tightened border security. Federal authorities worry that the handwritten, low-tech Haudenosaunee documents could be easily forged.
“For groups who qualify or individuals who qualify for a U.S. passport, given the emphasis that’s now placed on the security of travel documents, the best option for this group all along has been to procure a U.S. passport. They have chosen not to do so,” a State Department official said. “In the future, yes, they will need a U.S. passport to avoid a similar situation the next time they travel for any kind of international competition.”
The Iroquois Nationals finished fourth in 2006 at the World Lacrosse Championships in London, Ontario. The Iroquois’ central role in the history of the game is team is featured in a lengthy story in the current issue of Sports Illustrated. (Click here to read the story.)
The Iroquois must reach Manchester, England, in time for a 2:30 p.m. EST game today — which seems logistically improbable. If they can’t play, the team will have to forfeit the tournament’s opening match against England, said Ron Balls, a spokesman for the Federation of International Lacrosse, the sport’s governing body. The Iroquois-England game is scheduled after the opening ceremonies.
View full sizeOren Lyons (center), chairman of the Iroquois Nationals board of directors, listens during a news conference about the team's passports Wednesday in New York City. With him are legal counsel Tonya Frichner (left) and Nationals executive director Percy Abrams. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton granted the team members a one-time waiver to travel to England for the lacrosse world championships after they were barred from using Iroquois passports. But the conflict centers on issues more serious than sports. The native nations insist that they are sovereign governments, a thorny issue since the American Revolution.
The Haudenosaunee’s fight with New York and the United States over sovereignty has landed in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts in cases that involve land ownership, taxes, citizenship and military drafts. On Wednesday, the Haudenosaunee had attorneys in Washington, New York and Syracuse working the phones.
In Syracuse, attorney Joseph Heath was quoting 1794 Jay Treaty between the United States and England, which he said guaranteed Native Americans free passage between the United States and Canada. “This really goes back to the treaties,” said Heath, the lawyer for the traditional Haudenosaunee governments in New York.
Passports have been used since 1977
Since 1977, Oren Lyons and other Haudenosaunee members have traveled internationally using Haudenosaunee handwritten passports issued by a worker in the communications office of the Onondaga Nation south of Syracuse. The Iroquois Nationals have used those passports to go to international competitions since 1990.
Lyons and Sid Hill, the tadadaho or spiritual leader of the six Native American nations, traveled to Sweden and back on those passports earlier this year. They met there with the U.S. ambassador to Sweden, Matthew W. Barzun.
For several years, the Haudenosaunee have been working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to create an enhanced tribal membership card — one that includes a computer chip — to make it easier for the Native Americans to travel by car or boat between the U.S. and Canada without using passports, Heath said. However, those enhanced cards, similar to enhanced New York state driver’s licenses, do not replace the requirement for passports in international air travel.
Three weeks ago, the Iroquois Nationals applied to Britain for visas, Heath said. Thursday or Friday, British authorities notified the team it would not issue the visas unless the United States would guarantee that the players would be re-admitted to the United States without U.S. passports.
Lyons and Hill talked with Maffei about the problem over lunch at PJ’s Pub & Grill in Armory Square on Friday.
Breakthrough falls through
It appeared there was a breakthrough for the Iroquois at 8 a.m. Wednesday after U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-Fairport, chairwoman of the powerful House Rules Committee, spoke with Clinton by phone.
That was followed by a conference call between Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and Tonya Gonnella Frichner, an Onondaga and North America’s regional representative to the United Nations’ Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
The State Department then agreed to the one-time waivers, but members of the Haudenosaunee nations will be required to use U.S. passports for future international travel, said Darby Holladay, a spokesman.
But Britain held firm. The players cannot obtain visas to travel to England unless they have U.S. or Canadian passports, said Erin Taylor, a spokeswoman for the British Consulate in New York, late Wednesday in an e-mail to The Post-Standard.
Oren Lyons, an Onondaga Nation faithkeeper, All-America goalie and honorary chairman of the Iroquois Nationals, said, “We are deeply disappointed, and urge our friends and supporters to reach out to the British government to seek reconsideration in this unprecedented rejection of Haudenosaunee passports.”
Why, after Onondagas have used the Haudenosaunee passports for decades, did problems suddenly develop? A spokesman for the State Department would not say, referring the question to the Department of Homeland Security. A DHS spokesman declined to comment.
Washington correspondent Mark Weiner contributed to this report. Contact Mike McAndrew at mmcandrew@syracuse.com or 470-3016.