From spring sugar shack to roasting from corn at the end of summer, to meetings around winter hockey games, Quebec’s identity is expressed in many symbols. But how much of this activity is in fact inherited from Aboriginal people who welcomed the first settlers here? Our series of texts “Quebec Métis” delves into the question. Second of three articles.
First conceived as an Aboriginal healing ritual, the sport of lacrosse has since become Canada’s national summer sport.
In the Kahnawake sports complex, the local Mohawks played a game last Saturday against the Ottawa Axemen, as part of the Quebec Senior Lacrosse League playoffs. At the same time, the best players in the community were competing for the world championship in Limerick, Ireland.
Lacrosse is Canada’s national sport in the summer, along with hockey in the winter. But for the Mohawks, as for many Iroquois nations, lacrosse is much more than a sport. It’s been a healing ritual for generations.
A few hundred meters from the arena, in Kahnawake Park, Mohawks continue to practice lacrosse with sticks carved from the very hard wood of hickory, or white walnut, as their ancestors did.
“It’s a game of medicine,” explains Dave McComber, posted in front of a kiosk manufacturing traditional lacrosse sticks. There are several interpretations to this. Lacrosse can have a very deep meaning or can be just a game.”
“In the past, the game of lacrosse was a way of settling disputes between people, continues the man who has been practicing lacrosse for several years and who has given school workshops on the subject. Rather than war and fight, there were games that lasted for days. It was also a way to prepare for war. Because the games took place in large fields, you had to be good runners. I bet there weren’t many overweight people back then! »
To this day, Clan Mothers may call for a lacrosse match to settle a dispute, or to boost community morale in times of crisis.
Alongside David McComber, Preston Jacobs has been making traditional hickory lacrosse sticks for over 40 years.
“People now use plastic or aluminum poles instead. But here, the elders believe that if the stick is not made of wood, it has no curative power”, underlines David McComber.
In the Iroquois tradition, when a boy is born, it is common to place a walnut stick in his cradle, he explains. And it happens that traditional Mohawks are buried with a lacrosse stick, “to play a final game with the Creator”, adds Preston Jacobs.
In Iroquois mythology (the Haudenosaunee), twins, one representing good and the other evil, compete for power through a game of lacrosse.
Condemned by the Jesuits
Traditionally, the game of lacrosse was called tewaarathon, in Mohawk. The name “crosse” was invented by the French Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf in 1637. The Jesuits also condemned this game, which they considered too violent.
Today, lacrosse is a very popular game in Canada and around the world. In Canada, it was at the time of Confederation, in 1867, that Europeans began to take an interest in the sport. After the organization of a few matches involving Euro-Canadians and Aboriginals, the first exclusively Euro-Canadian lacrosse team was formed in Montreal in 1842, relates Daniel Ferland in his master’s thesis. Relations between Aboriginals and Whites in the sport of lacrosse in the Montreal region in the 19th centurye centurysubmitted to the History Department of the Université de Sherbrooke.
In 1860, a dentist named William George Beers published a pamphlet in which he laid down the fundamental rules of the game of lacrosse, which were intended to make the game “safer and less violent”. Playing time, which is not at all the same value for Euro-Canadians as it is for Aboriginals, is set at two hours. This is the beginning of the exclusion of Aboriginal people from this amateur sport, for which they will be confined to representation matches.
In fact, as early as 1868, the National Lacrosse Association of Canada (CNLA) regulated the participation of Aboriginal people, who were considered professional players and who could have access to scholarships, in amateur lacrosse tournaments. In fact, Aboriginal players, seen as professionals, will gradually be excluded from the Association. Consequently, writes Ferland again, the Aboriginals will develop an intertribal league, to which the teams of Kahnawake and Akwesasne will belong.
Lacrosse is a sport considered to be of Canadian origin, while hockey, whose first official game was played in Montreal in 1875, is of European origin. Moreover, the very term “Canadian” was first used by Jacques Cartier and Champlain to designate the Aboriginal peoples, before it defined the French settlers who came to settle in Canada and their descendants.
In 1876, a team of Iroquois was invited to play a match in front of Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle.
“Until 1914, it was really lacrosse that was the most popular sport here,” says Gilles Janson, sports historian, who was interested in the relationship between French Canadians and sport in the 19th century.e century. “Lacrosse games drew huge crowds, whereas hockey was played more by college students. »
provisional discipline
Four years ago, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) granted lacrosse provisional discipline status in preparation for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. However, several members of the Confederacy of the Six Iroquois Nations, or Haudenosaunee, have said they wish to be present there, under their own flag reflecting their Aboriginal identity. Already, the 2022 World Games have been marked by the participation of the Haudenosaunee Nationals team, made up exclusively of Indigenous players.
Officially, to be recognized by the IOC, the Haudenosaunee will notably have to form a national Olympic committee which would require them to bring together athletes in at least four other sports. Currently, nearly a dozen territories are IOC members, despite not being UN members, including Puerto Rico and Hong Kong.