Indigenous tribes, in what is now the northeastern U.S. and Canada, have played lacrosse for millennia. Similar stick-and-ball games were played by tribes across the Southeast and Great Lakes region. But according to NCAA data, less than 1% of college lacrosse players are American Indian or Alaskan Native, and more than 80% are white.
Pacific Northwest Native Lacrosse is trying to change that. As reported in Willamette Week, the organization recruits Indigenous lacrosse players from across the PNW to participate in tournaments, youth camps and clinics.
JD Elquist is the founder of PNWNL. Bilįį Blackhorn is a senior at South Eugene High School who’s played lacrosse for 10 years, including with PNWNL. They join us to talk about the importance of emphasizing the sport’s Indigenous roots.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Indigenous tribes in what is now the Northeastern U.S. and Canada played versions of lacrosse for millennia. Similar stick and ball games are played by tribes across the Southeast and Great Lakes regions. But according to NCAA data, less than 1% of college lacrosse players now are American Indian or Alaskan Native. More than 80% are white.
The group Pacific Northwest Native Lacrosse is trying to address this. As reported in Willamette Week, the organization recruits Indigenous lacrosse players from across the Northwest to participate in tournaments, youth camps and clinics.
JD Elquist is the founder of the group. Bilįį Blackhorn is a senior at South Eugene High School. He’s played for 10 years, including with PNW Native Lacrosse. They both join us now. It’s great to have both of you on the show.
JD Elquist: Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for having us.
Bilįį Blackhorn: Thank you.
Miller: JD first – can you give us the brief history of lacrosse’s origins?
Elquist: Yeah, you kind of nailed it in your introduction there. The Haudenosaunee in the Northeast, the Ojibwe, Anishinaabe, Dakota tribes and others in the Great Lakes region, and the Choctaw and Cherokee in the South are the stick of ball games that we point to as the origins of our game. And then here in the Northwest, we’ve been doing some research about stick and ball games that maybe mimic some of those as well.
Miller: What’s the spiritual connection to lacrosse in some of these sovereign nations?
Elquist: Yeah, good question. Lacrosse is known as medicine game or Creator’s Game. A quick anecdote is that in the Haudenosaunee culture, they believe it’s a problem-solving tool that comes from Creator through Sky Woman, and is a part of the origin stories of lacrosse for the Haudenosaunee people. There’s kind of a lot of lacrosse in origin stories for various tribes. A deeply spiritual game for the tribes that play it in that way.
Miller: Bilįį, how did you first get into lacrosse?
Blackhorn: I credit a lot of it to my amá sání, which is my mother’s mother, so my grandma. She showed me this movie – it’s funny it all comes from a movie – called “Crooked Arrows.” It’s a movie about a bunch of Native kids coming together to play lacrosse, winning a state championship kind of thing. It’s kind of like a niche sports movie. But personally, to see another bunch of boys with braids and Natives out there playing the game, having a good time, that felt inspiring to that little 5-year-old. I wanted to do something with that. So when I moved up here to Oregon, I found a way and I just kind of started playing.
Miller: Did you find anything like that, boys with braids or boys who looked like you, when you first started playing?
Blackhorn: No, because I first started playing organized lacrosse here in Eugene. I don’t really see a lot of other Natives out here or boys with braids, you could say, people who kind of share the same identity or similar identity and path as me.
Miller: Did you love the game from the beginning though?
Blackhorn: I would say so, yeah. I learned about it from a movie, but then I started doing my own research of where it comes from and why it’s played. And a big part of it for me is that when you play, you’re playing for the Creator’s entertainment, you’re playing with a good mind and a good heart. That’s part of what the medicine is, right? You bring your good mind and a good heart to the game. I find myself at peace when I play. I’m able to have a clear mind.
Miller: I’m fascinated by that feeling. I’ve watched some clips on YouTube of some of your goals over the years. Your mind may be at peace, but you’re running furiously, you’re moving really quickly, you’re shooting the ball really fast. Lacrosse used to be known when I was growing up as “the fastest game on two feet.” In some ways, it’s a blindingly fast, sometimes violent game with checking. And yet, you feel at peace when you’re playing it?
Blackhorn: It’s kind of what like JD said too, it’s that spiritual connection and it’s that sense that you’re playing for something bigger than yourself. That’s kind of what fuels me. It makes me feel like I can take as many hits, as many checks, whatever. I’m out there playing for a purpose that’s larger than myself. Whatever I do, I just give it 100%, and I’m able to feel at peace with that, knowing I did what I could.
Miller: JD, how did PNW Native Lax first start?
Elquist: I found the game in the seventh grade from my Native Ed teacher. I’m Native Alaskan by descent, so the stick and ball games we’re talking about don’t come from my culture. But my Native ed teacher knew lacrosse was a Native game and felt like I would connect to it as a youth. I had a relatively rough upbringing, and she was absolutely correct. This is 23 years now for me in the game. My connection to it as a Native man is why I’m in the game. So that’s kind of the origin story.
I’ve been coaching lacrosse for a long time and for mostly dominantly white programs, with all respect. It kind of felt like I lost my way, lost my path and why I love the game. [I] had a moment to recenter, and I really felt Creator pointing me back to why I fell in love with it. I’m at a place now where I feel like I can give that back. That was kind of the creation story of PNW Native Lacrosse.
And I’ll shout out Bilįį because he’s one of the first Native players that I knew was Native, and had many conversations with other coaches about when I started thinking about the idea of forming PNW Native Lacrosse. And seeing Bilįį play and knowing of him was a big reason why I knew it was possible to put together our fully Native travel teams that we now have.
Miller: When you say that you lost your way as a coach before that, what do you mean?
Elquist: I was actually in Portland at Delta Park at a tournament. I was really focused on the wins and losses, really focused on how our team was performing. This was for a program I was coaching for, and we were not performing well. And I, like I think many coaches, found myself very frustrated and very upset with our level of play, but also with just how it was going. And quite frankly, it’s not that serious. I think that’s one of the things that changed for me. I left that scenario and called my wife. I was actually in tears because I love the game of lacrosse so much for all the reasons we’re talking about. And the thing that I had lost is that piece. I was so caught up in wins and losses that I forgot about the medicine, if that makes sense, and needed to recenter.
Miller: Bilįį, what was it like for you when you first started taking part in PNW Native Lacrosse camps, tournaments or teams?
Blackhorn: So, first thing we did together was a tournament up in Portland. I was really excited coming up to that point, because we had all Native coaching staff and all Native players. And someone being from Oregon, something I’ve never seen. And I got really excited to experience and be a part of that, especially because my cousin’s on that team, and I didn’t know he was my cousin, but I had found him through lacrosse. I feel like our similar experiences that we all bring being Natives in this game kind of helped us out, and it brought a good feeling to the team and like a feeling of connection, like you’ve known all these guys for a while. It was just really easy to be a part of, really easy to mesh with guys. And I’m someone who’s not really social or kind of outgoing like that. But it felt like a second home almost.
Miller: Really quickly, because that was just a tournament, it was the first time you’d played together, right?
Blackhorn: Yeah, we had one practice and then went out and played the next day.
And then I’ve gotten to know JD better over time. I had an invite from the Siletz tribal group to help teach little kindergarten through fourth graders how to play lacrosse. And I reached out to JD, and he drove down from Washington to help us out. He’s had camps at the U of O I’ve helped out at, and he’s had other tournaments I’ve played at. So it’s really built a good connection that I can be fond of.
Miller: JD, what has recruiting been like? When you’ve gone around and talked to different tribal leaders or schools, what’s your pitch and what do you hear back?
Elquist: Yeah, a lot of it has actually been built. As you mentioned earlier, we have our camps and clinics in travel communities, which is a different thing. How I met Bilįį is through our travel teams, and he’s helped out with some of those camps and clinics like we talked about. But I’ll be honest, our whole club has mostly been built through social media and through meeting people like Bilįį, who then talk about their cousin Eagle, who then knows somebody else. The Indigenous lacrosse world is a small world and there’s a lot of connections in that space. It’s kind of organically grown through word of mouth and through the access through social media, if that makes sense.
Miller: Has anyone said to you, “Yes, I get that Lacrosse is indigenous to North America and in different versions exists in different places, but it’s not our tribe, it’s not general Indigenous culture.” Has anyone said that?
Elquist: Yeah 100%, it’s come up for sure. And you can see a little bit of pause in various tribes that we’ve worked with. But our quick reminder is we as Indigenous people are a pretty small percentage of the population of the U.S. We believe that we celebrate the various tribes, the over 500 different federally recognized tribes in our country, as individual, unique, sovereign cultures with their own languages, games and whatnot. But with that, we’re still a smaller percentage of the population and we think that the game of lacrosse, being from Indigenous culture, is our game. We believe that and we own that, and we try to be in that space. Most tribes that we’ve talked to understand that. Our biggest goal is just to make sure that we’re acknowledging where the game comes from, and the various tribes whose game it belongs to and their culture, but also carving out our own space as Native people in this game who love this game for all the reasons that it exists.
And the other thing we’re working on is how do we continue to localize the game of lacrosse to our tribes here in the Northwest, if that’s through language, if that’s through different cultural practices, and also more research. We recently found a book that points to what looks like the Great Lakes version of lacrosse being played at Fort Vancouver by what was characterized as Chinook people in this study from the mid-1800s. So we do everything we can internally to continue to find ways to localize the game, while paying respect to where the game comes from and the cultures that it comes from, while also recognizing that I think PNW Native Lacrosse is actually creating our own space in the world of Indigenous lacrosse.
Miller: Bilįį, you’re about to graduate. Where do you see lacrosse in your future?
Blackhorn: I don’t see lacrosse leaving my future. I feel like I’ve played this game, I’ve been a part of it so long that I can’t see myself living without it in a way. I’m just doing whatever I can to keep playing, whether it’s coaching, whether it’s playing, I just want to be part of the game, keep that connection alive.
Miller: Bilįį and JD, thanks so much.
Blackhorn / Elquist: Thank you.
Miller: Bilįį Blackhorn is a senior at South Eugene High School. He’s taken part in programs run by JD Elquist’s Pacific Northwest Native Lacrosse organization.
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