This week much of the mainstream and Native media has covered the Iroquois National Lacrosse team’s efforts to travel to England to participate in the Lacrosse World Championships. Ranked fourth in the world, the Haudenosaunee team passed an agonizing week waiting for the United States government to allow them to travel using their Iroquois National Passports, which they have used to travel internationally since 1977 and used as recently as two years ago.

As usual with sports, none of this is just about a game. Sovereignty, spirituality, and sport collide, and the Nationals’ plight underscores the important fact that lacrosse, now played internationally, is Indigenous born. Much of the media coverage this week has touched on the long history and cultural connections the Haudenosaunee people have with the current sport of lacrosse.

Lacrosse has roots in several single- and double-racket ball games played by First Nations and Native American people, including anetso which is played by the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation. In a new book, author Michael J. Zogry looks at the intertwined nature of game and ritual and offers an important examination of stick ball history and continuity among the Cherokee people. The book Anetso, the Cherokee Ball Game: At the Center of Ceremony and Identity (University of North Carolina Press, 2010) is our most recent First Peoples’ title, and it provides a framework for rethinking the understanding of ritual and performance, as well as their relationship to cultural identity. Look for a guest post from Dr. Zogry in the coming weeks.

For just a glimpse at the recent media coverage on lacrosse, here are links to some of the articles about the Iroquois National Lacrosse team:

Allow Iroquois travel [The Buffalo News]

Bid for Trophy becomes a Test of Iroquois Identity [New York Times]

The Iroquois Lacrosse Team Denied [Native America Calling]

Iroquois National travel window closing [Indian Country Today]

Iroquois Nationals Update: Britain Denies Visas [Lacrosse News]

Native American lacrosse team forfeits first game in England as passport dispute drags on [Buffalo Post Blog]

Pride of a Nation [Sports Illustrated]

Statement from Chief Oren R. Lyons, Honorary Chairman, Iroquois Nationals Lacrosse Team [NATV]

US Rule Could keep Iroquois From Lacrosse Tourney [Associate Press via CBS News]

Why the tribe who invented lacrosse can’t play it here [The UK Independent]

Author Jeffrey P. Shepherd’s new book, We Are An Indian Nation: A History of the Hualapai People (University of Arizona Press, 2010), focuses on the historical construction of the Hualapai Nation in the face of modern American colonialism. Shepherd drew on archival research, interviews, and participant observation to describe how thirteen bands of extended families known as the Pai confronted American colonialism and recast themselves as a modern Indigenous nation. Shepherd could not have constructed this community history without the collaboration of the Hualapai tribe. For this week’s blog, Shepherd describes his process of collaboration and why he believes shifting research methodologies are important:

History and the Hualapai Tribe
By Jeffrey P. Shepherd

Lucille Watahomigie and Jeffrey Shepherd in Peach Springs, Arizona.

When the Hualapai Tribal Council heard the proposal for this project in 1999, they wanted to discuss Hualapai history. They knew their own past, but they wanted to know what I had read in books or learned on the reservation. This past, we all agreed, formed an important story that Natives and non-Natives could learn from. Hualapai struggles for the land were powerful examples of cultural persistence that could motivate other oppressed peoples to fight for justice.

In particular, their legal battle against the Santa Fe Railway (they won a precedent-setting land claims case in the US Supreme Court in 1941) illustrated how a small nation could be victorious against one of the then wealthiest corporations in America. Their history of wage labor, respecting female leaders, and struggling for water rights stood as powerful examples of resilience. After discussing these and other issues for two hours, they supported my proposal to write about their history.

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The First Peoples publishing initiative is headed to Albuquerque to attend the 2010 Native American Literature Symposium, which will be from March 4-6 at the Isleta Hotel and Casino. The schedule is packed with panels exploring cinema, fiction, poetry, and performance from both theoretical and pedagogical angles. To get ready for this three-day event, we’ve made a recommended reading list of books by panelists, as well as titles that will be the topic of sessions or readings:

Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko, 1992, Penguin Editions
Beyond the Reach of Time and Change by Simon Ortiz, 2005, University of Arizona Press
Blood Run by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, 2007, Salt Publishing
The Last Report on the Miracles from Little No Horse, by Louise Erdrich, 2001, HarperCollins
Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita by Jennifer Nez Denetdale, 2007, University of Arizona Press
Night Sky, Morning Star by Evelina Zuni Lucero, 2000, University of Arizona Press
A Radiant Curve: Poems and Stories by Luci Tapahonso, 2008, University of Arizona Press
Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism by Craig S. Womack, University of Minnesota Press
Shell Shaker by LeAnne Howe, 2001, Aunt Lute Books
The Truth about Stories by Thomas King, 2008, University of Minnesota Press

Grab your books and we’ll see you in Albuquerque. We’ll have a table of books from our partner presses, as well as information about our initiative. Please stop by and say hello. To view the complete conference program please click here.

With the 11-day climate change conference now underway in Copenhagen, Indigenous peoples worldwide are watching, even if they aren’t able to attend. In an opinion piece posted last week, Indian Country Today columnist Valerie Taliman writes that Native people are disproportionately affected by global climate change and yet are underrepresented at the conference.

At the conference, a contingent of Indigenous representatives will get the opportunity to present the Mystic Lake Declaration, which came out of last month’s Native Peoples Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop II: Indigenous Perspectives and Solutions, held in the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, Prior Lake, Minnesota.

Also last month, World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick called on world leaders at the Copenhagen Conference to include Indigenous peoples. Perhaps to underscore Zoellick’s point, United Nations University and the Traditional Knowledge Initiative have partnered with groups across the globe to present the Indigenous Voices on Climate Change film festival at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, starting tomorrow and ending on the 13th. Fifteen of the films, which are provided by United Nations University, will be shown. They can be seen via YouTube or below.  Or follow this link to see the short film “Fighting Carbon with Fire in Australia.”

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Our four-press collaboration is just one of many university press projects funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The foundation has funded fourteen collaborative initiatives among thirty scholarly presses since 2008.

“There are so many advantages to university presses pooling our resources within a subject area, such as Indigenous studies,” says Kathryn Conrad, interim director of the University of Arizona Press and the chief investigator on the First Peoples initiative. “Each of the presses involved in this collaborative offers unique expertise within the field. We are all learning from each other and also sharing what we already know.”

If you’ve spent any time on our website, than you probably know that First Peoples is a collaborative between four exceptional presses, University of Arizona Press, University of North Carolina Press, University of Minnesota Press, and Oregon State University Press. At the presses, acquiring editors and marketing staffs are working together to build an initiative that reflects the new directions that scholars are taking with their research in Indigenous studies.

“In these early days of the First Peoples grant, I’ve been excited anew by the energy of promising younger scholars in the field of Indigenous studies,” says Mark Simpson-Vos, acquiring editor at University of North Carolina Press. “As an editor, the initiative has brought me in contact with an even wider range of authors and potential readers, which was one of my primary hopes when we inaugurated the project. The diversity of subjects, disciplinary approaches, and methodologies has been exceptional, and it reinforces what an important moment this is for those who study indigenous people. As our first books are published and received by scholars as well as indigenous communities, I’m looking forward to a further broadening and deepening of the conversation.”

To see a complete list of Mellon funded university press initiatives, visit: http://bit.ly/1Qxrq7