Do Indian nations within U.S. borders have the right to issue passports? Most non-native Americans are unaware that North America’s Indian nations have never yielded in their battle to assert rights of national sovereignty like these.
One of the stories we’re following at Worldmeets.US is an incident that emerged on July 8 between the United States and nationals of the Iroquois Nation.
Over recent days, the U.S. government has decided to reject the Iroquois Nation passports of the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team, keeping them from traveling to Great Britain for the world lacrosse championships.
It seems that the United States has offered the Iroquois U.S. passports so they can go – but the Iroquois consider it an insult. What the trouble is with the Iroquois passports hasn’t yet been made clear, but negotiations are under way.
In a plea published in Indian Country, a Native American newspaper, Team Chairman Oren R. Lyons Joagquisho writes in part:
The long-stick game is a gift to the world from the Haudenosaunee, the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. It would be strange – beyond strange – if the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team, the national team of the Haudenosaunee, were denied participation in the World Lacrosse Championships by agencies of the United States. We are perplexed by this position taken by the Obama Administration.
Since the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team’s admittance to the Federation of International Lacrosse in 1983, the team has participated in every world competition as a member nation, flying our own colors, singing our own anthem and traveling on our own Haudenosaunee passports, to England, Australia and Japan. As citizens we have traveled internationally on our own passports since 1977.
We don’t take this issue of passports lightly. We have always traveled with the utmost respect for the sovereignty of the nations involved. As indigenous peoples of North America, we have more than 200 years of treaties and international relations with our brother, the United States.
We need your support to help convince the U.S. to accommodate our travel to Manchester, England. The Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team and Team England are scheduled to open the World Lacrosse Championships at 7 p.m. July 15.
This is a call for support. We want to ensure that Native peoples should not be told they cannot leave or cannot return to their homelands.
Please contact the White House at (202) 456-4771 to express your support for our clearance to leave and return to participate in the World Lacrosse Championships in Manchester, England, as soon as possible. Let us know you did so by e-mailing [email protected].
Please also e-mail White House Indian Affairs senior staff Kimberly Teehee at [email protected] and two State Department officials, Kathleen Milton at [email protected] and Lynn Sicade at [email protected].
READ MORE AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
Founder and Managing Editor of Worldmeets.US