Director James Cameron, Seneca Nation donate money to help team cover unexpected cost of waiting in New York City.
View full sizeCoaches and players of the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team spend time in their Queens hotel room Thursday singing a Native American social dance called the Stomp. It didn;t look good Friday afternoon that they would be allowed to travel to the World Lacrosse championships in Manchester, England, on their Haudenosaunee passports. Left to right are players Ryan Burnham and Cody Johnson, both of Six Nations; player James Cathers, of Syracuse; assistant coach Jerome Thompson Sr., of the Onondaga Nation; assistant coach Ed Shenandoah, of the Onondaga Nation; and player Jeremy Thompson, of the Onondaga Nation. New York City -- An Iroquois lacrosse team blocked from traveling to a tournament in England because they refuse to use U.S. or Canadian passports has bowed out of the competition.
Team manager Ansley Jemison says the team no longer has time to make the tournament, which ends next Saturday. The 23 members of the Iroquois Nationals team have already missed their first scheduled game of the World Lacrosse Championships.
The United Kingdom has refused to recognize passports issued by the Iroquois confederacy.
"I've had better days," Jemison said.
Jemison said the squad is still trying to gain recognition for the passports so they can attend future international games.
Previous versions of this story are below.
New York City -- The Iroquois Nationals hung in through another day of diplomatic dickering, but as Friday afternoon wore on the team’s odds of competing in the World Lacrosse Championships in Manchester, England, appeared to wane.
Leaders of the lacrosse team hoped they would hear by noon whether British authorities would let the them fly to England on Haudenosaunee passports. But at 12:30 p.m., a half-hour after they had expected news, team officials were getting legal advice on whom to turn to next to get travel visas, General Manager Ansley Jemison said.
Erin Taylor, a spokeswoman at the British Consulate in New York, said her government’s position remained unchanged: Team members must present travel documents her government considers valid, plus U.S. or Canadian passports.
Shortly after 3:30 p.m., the team issued a news release calling on the consulate to speed up review and processing of their travel paper applications – documents the release said team attorney Tonya Gonnella Frichner had been trying to submit since June 28.
“We have been trying to gain admittance to the British Consulate to meet in person with officials in New York for the last 18 days,” Frichner said. “It would appear that officials may have made an arbitrary decision without a proper review of the application materials.”
While the release was being drafted, Jemison was booking his team into another hotel.
Benefactors such as Hollywood director James Cameron, who donated $50,000, and the Seneca Nation of Indians, with a $10,000 contribution, have been helping the team bear the cost of an extended stay in New York City. Lacrosse colleagues in the metropolitan area have helped schedule practices and scrimmages, often at times when the team had booked flights they could not board.
The Nationals also acquired the services of the Jackson Lewis Law Firm, which is working without fee to intervene with the British Consulate.
How much longer it makes sense to stay in New York is another question.
While the Nationals were stalled there, the championships got under way Thursday in Manchester without them. The team was supposed to play in the opening game against host England but had to forfeit. Germany took the Nationals’ place in that game and in the tournament’s elite Blue Division. The Nationals, now in the lesser Plum Division, then forfeited a match with Spain scheduled for noon Friday, Manchester time.
If they can’t make their next game, scheduled for 6 p.m. Manchester time Saturday against Hong Kong, the Nationals — currently fourth-ranked in the world — might lose out on any chance to win a medal, Jemison said.
The tournament’s website reported that some representatives of the Nationals marched in Thursday’s opening ceremonies. According to InsideLacrosse.com, the marchers were three assistant coaches.
The dispute keeping the team from the championships pits Haudenosaunee pride on one side and post-9/11 security worries on the other.
The Nationals insist on traveling under Haudenosaunee passports as a matter of sovereignty and national identity. The passports had been accepted internationally for three decades, but in the past two years have become less accepted as nations adopted new rules requiring more high-tech travel papers. Haudenosaunee and U.S. officials are working on more sophisticated tribal travel documents but the are not yet ready.
When the week began, the British wanted assurance the United States would let Nationals members traveling on Haudenosaunee passports back in the country when the team left Britain. The U.S. government at first required Nationals members to use U.S. passports. The State Department agreed Wednesday to grant a one-time waiver, a move expected to resolve the issue.
Instead, the British insisted on U.S. or Canadian passports and continued to do so despite mounting political pressure from personalities including Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney to Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians, who both addressed letters to British Prime Minister David Cameron over the past two days, asking his government to reconsider.
Contact John Mariani at jmariani@syracuse.com or 470-3105.