Britain denies lacrosse team entry for games
Iroquois passport won’t be accepted
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 world championship in Manchester unless the British government reverses its decision and allows them 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.
In a statement, the U.K. Borders Agency said: “Like all those seeking entry into the U.K., they must present a document that we recognise as valid to enable us to complete our immigration and other checks.”
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 crackdowns on document fraud and illegal immigration.
Federation of International Lacrosse spokesman Ron Balls said in a statement on the championship website that the Iroquois team would forfeit the opening game against England tonight if it didn’t arrive on time.
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, whose land stretches from upstate New York into Ontario, Canada.
The Iroquois helped invent lacrosse, perhaps as early as 1,000 years ago. Their participation in the once-every-four-year world championship tournament is a rare example of international recognition of their sovereignty.
U.S. authorities had said the issue was a matter of border security rather than Iroquois sovereignty.