Iroquois lacrosse team loses bid to travel to England

Iroquois lacrosse players who refused to travel on passports issued by the United States and Canada because they do not consider themselves citizens of those countries exhausted their last option yesterday for going to the sport's world championship in England.

Leaders of the Iroquois Nationals squad announced yesterday that a last ditch attempt to persuade British officials to recognize their Haudenosaunee passports had failed.

"While we are deeply disappointed we could not bring our talented team to the world championships, there simply was no way we could accede to the recommendation that we accept either American or Canadian passports to travel," the team's chairman, Oren Lyons, said in a statement.

Lyons called the passports "essential to our identity as a sovereign people making our way in the world community."

Saturday, some team members had already returned home to upstate New York and Canada after spending days camped at a hotel near Kennedy Airport.

The highly ranked team had to forfeit its first two games of the tournament, taking place in Manchester, England, when first the United States, and then the United Kingdom, refused to honor the passports carried by the players.

The Iroquois' last scheduled game was to take place today, but team officials had continued efforts to obtain visas for the players before getting yet another "No" from British officials yesterday afternoon.

In the past, the United States and other nations had allowed some limited use of passports issued by the Iroquois Confederacy, but tighter security rules since the Sept. 11 attacks have led to a crackdown.

The team's refusal to travel on passports not issued by the Iroquois confederacy goes to the heart of one of the most sensitive issues in Indian Country - sovereignty.

The rights of Native nations to govern themselves independently has long been recognized by federal treaties, but the extent of that recognition beyond U.S. borders is under challenge in a post-Sept. 11 world.

In recent months, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been working with tribes to develop tribal ID cards with enhanced security features. Those would be good for arrivals in the United States only by land or sea but couldn't be used in lieu of a federal passport.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) also has urged the federal government to work with other countries to develop internationally recognized travel documents for American Indian nations.