Team: Passport dispute may keep Iroquois from championship of lacrosse, a sport they invented
By APMonday, July 12, 2010
US rule could keep Iroquois from lacrosse tourney
NEW YORK — Iroquois lacrosse team officials say their squad is being kept from the world championship of the sport invented by their ancestors because of a disagreement over passports.
The 23 players had planned to travel Sunday to Manchester, England, on passports issued by the Iroquois Confederacy.
But Tonya Gonnella Frichner, a member of the Onondaga Nation, says the State Department won’t allow them to return to the U.S. with the documents. Frichner says the team has been offered U.S. passports, but the players refuse to carry them, because they see the U.S.-issued documents as an attack on their identity
Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, says the U.S. government is working to resolve the dispute “with an interagency team including the Department of State.”
