Nov. 26, 2008
by Matt DaSilva, Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff
The last place Richard Roy expected to find lacrosse was in the
abandoned bowels of a middle school building in the high desert of
Oregon.
Where Roy grew up in New Hampshire, cowboys and Indians were
fictional manifestations of child's play. But in Burns, Ore., a
desolate place built 5,000 feet above sea level on old ideals and
sagebrush, the tension is real. Roughly 12 percent of the ranching
town's population - including 341 members of the Burns Paiute
Reservation - lives in poverty.
"I don't know if you've ever been to Burns, but it is in the
middle of nowhere," says Bill Rexford of Bend, Ore., nearly three
hours north of Burns. "Eastern Oregon has had a tough time. It had
a depressed economy even before the rest of the country. Mills
closed down; food processors closed down. There's nothing out there
unless you work for the reservation or you're a biologist."
But as Roy, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist stationed
in Burns, rummaged for football equipment in the so-called
"dungeon" of Lincoln Valley Junior High School, he rediscovered a
national treasure in the form of a 55-gallon drum filled with
plastic lacrosse sticks. He picked one up and cradled a ball in the
dim-lit basement, whipping it against the walls as players
marveled.
"Coach, did you play this?"
"Oh yeah," said Roy, who played men's lacrosse for Unity College
in Maine. "This is better than football boys."
Roy's appreciation for the game's Native American roots,
cultivated by a friendship with Hartwick College and Iroquois
Nationals coach Bill Bjorness, begged for him to start a lacrosse
program in Burns - not only for his sons, Andrew and Kinnon, but
also for disenchanted Paiute teens.
He proceeded with caution.
"The last time a white guy showed up in Indian country bearing
gifts, look what happened," Roy said. "We've got to be real
careful."
Amos First-Raised III, the tribe's forward-thinking fish and
wildlife director and Roy's close personal friend, urged the tribal
council to support Roy's initiative. Together they reassured
council members that though lacrosse is rooted primarily in the
Iroquois tradition, it bears striking resemblance to
"nadzi-tsa-ga," the ancient Paiute stick game.
With the cooperation of the Boys and Girls Club of Harney County
and the Burns Paiute Tribe, Roy founded the Nadzi-Tsa-Ga Lacrosse
Club in 2005. Each year, the club receives a donation from the
tribe's prevention program, intended to combat troubling youth
trends such as drugs, crime and diabetes.
Though the high school team competes with members of the Oregon
High School Lacrosse Association's High Desert Conference,
community, culture and education remain at the program's core.
Teams convene in a prayer of thanksgiving, borrowed from both
Christian and Native American traditions, before every practice or
game. Their helmets are decked with decals of the Hiawatha belt.
Fathers are encouraged to jump in and play with their sons.
Roy reminds players of a time before lacrosse became a meal
ticket, when people played this sport to nourish the soul. However,
he has managed to send one player to a junior college in New York
and currently has a sophomore, Gabe First-Raised, Amos' son, whom
he said could play in college.
"Rick's using the program to teach life lessons and using the
sport as his classroom," said Rexford, the head coach at rival
Sisters High School. "Roots and wings - ground the kids, but give
them confidence to go out into the world."
Amos
First-Raised, Gabe's father who encouraged Roy to start a
lacrosse program, died Sept. 29 in an auto accident while hunting
elk. He was 38.
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A string of tragedies, including the deaths of two players'
fathers this year, had shaken that confidence. Then on Sept. 29,
the unthinkable - Amos First Raised, whose leadership in the Burns
community inspired Paiutes and non-Paiutes alike, was killed in a
traffic accident while hunting elk. He was 38.
First-Raised saw infinite value in the Burns Paiute Reservation.
To him, it was a symbol of survival. Six years ago, First-Raised
stood on a wind-raked hill overlooking former ranchland bought by
the federal government for the tribe to restore its natural habitat
and told Seattle Magazine, "It feels good. It's ours. This
is home. We know this country. There's nothing empty about it."
His death, Roy said, "was bad for the tribe. It was bad for the
community."
The players, including Gabe, looked to Roy for solace. He too, was
shaken. Citing an Iroquois tradition, Roy then asked First-Raised's
widow, Jody Richards, if Nadzi-Tsa-Ga could host medicine games for
him and the other fathers who had died. She said yes. He extended
an invitation to Rexford, who eagerly replied, "Yeah, we're all
over it."
A
flyer advertising the Oct. 25 medicine game hosted by Nadzi-Tsa-Ga
includes a traditional medicine wheel flanked by three feathers for
the three fathers lost in the last year.
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It wasn't until Oct. 25, the day of the medicine games which by
then also included two more teams from Idaho, that Roy found out
why.
The day before First-Raised's death, Rexford's team suffered a
shocking loss of its own. Ian Stark, a 140-pound firecracker who
played defense for Sisters High School, committed suicide Sept.
28.
"You want to be ready for something like this if you want to build
a community," Rexford said, "but it just doesn't make any sense to
us. Everyone's more angry than anything else around here."
A month later, the national lacrosse community is in a similar
state of shock.
The tragic deaths of Tom Borrelli, a National Lacrosse League Hall
of Famer and writer for Lacrosse Magazine, and Will Barrow, a 2008
University of Virginia co-captain found dead Saturday in his
Charlottesville apartment, have hit the lacrosse community like a
freight train.
Michael Piegare, a 21-year-old defenseman for Pace University, was
killed in an auto accident on I-287 Saturday. Allyson Hogan, a
19-year-old women's lacrosse player for the University of
Rochester, remains hospitalized in guarded condition after an
unlicensed driver hit her while she was walking back from an
off-campus party over the weekend.
Like Roy and Rexford, there are a lot of people in lacrosse right
now wondering why.
Roy found his answer in the form of an ancient Native American
symbol - the medicine wheel, which represents the four seasons and
circle of life. It was the centerpiece of a custom-made banner
under which four lacrosse teams, fathers and sons, played Oct. 25.
They surrounded their sticks in a circle and prayed.
Ermon
Smartt says a traditional Paiute prayer of
thanksgiving.
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The Iroquois believe that if a game of lacrosse is played with
proper mind, body and spirit, and the Creator is pleased with the
effort, he will take the energy generated during the game and use
it to heal and individual or community. Roy adapted the tradition
to "honor the memory of Amos the best way I knew how."
After the games, which also included former college players,
participants reconvened in the City of Hines Fire Hall, where Ermon
Smartt said a traditional Paiute prayer of thanksgiving, before
turkeys and hams provided by the Burns Paiute Tribe and side dishes
provided by parents.
For Roy, the events of the last four years unfolded full
circle.
"Yes, we had tragedy," Roy said, "but we've also been given
blessings."
