Category: Telling Your Story

On July 12, 2017, The youth of the Pitzer pipeline program had such an amazing experience today from learning more upon college and there requirements to ending our day with a new indigenous movie created and directed by Gayle Anne Kelley titled Spirit Game: Pride of a Nation. It was amazing to learn the true history and origin of the game lacrosse and how from a young age the iroquois players would play. I learned that the game lacrosse had more meaning which was for medicine to express themselves instead of a game to just play between each other.

The movie was such an informational movie especially for the youth to inspire them and show them some of there history. The movie was so touching just to see how all 6 nations came together to have this home game in there reservation and how even though they lost there final game they all were still so supportive of each other because at the end of the day the game is just a way to show there creator the respect they have for him and appreciation for the game he created. I hope to see more films like this one day and to just see more of our culture and history being shared to the world.

Peace and Love Christine

After watching Spirt Game: Pride of a Nation, I realized this documentary was nothing like any other sports documentary. This movie is inspirational to native youth who do not receive the chance to learn their history that is commonly left out of history books. The Federation of International Lacrosse holding its tournament on iroquois territory was huge for indigenous peoples everywhere. The movie covers the struggles of being native, always having to fight to protect their culture. It follows the endeavor of the path to dismantle the doctrine of discovery. After working years to organize a encounter with the pope, the secret service disrespected native elders and beliefs while destroying the work towards meeting the pope. The movie ended in a way that reflects historical context with the natives continuing to fight to amend and hold up their culture, traditions, and pride.

I thought the movie Spirit Game Pride of a Nation is an extremely necessary film for the indigenous community for a couple of different reasons. The first being that the Chief Oren Lyons is an executive producer for the film, this is extremely influential for the native community because it shows native youth that we can do phenomenal things with our stories and begin sharing our history through different media platforms. The movie also shows how indigenous people are continuing to be dehumanized by colonial oppression in very vital scenes of the film. When secret service agents took one of the onondaga chiefs head pieces that symbolized much more than what it seemed but just like in the past ignorant white people could not comprehend its significance and continued to disrespect native culture.

PS. indigenous people have always lived in harmony with our mother so i was wondering in construction of the lacrosse arena what did the Haudenosaunee people do to make the arena as sustainable as possible?

Yo what’s up it’s ya gurl Huitzilin! Today I got the amazing opportunity to participate in watching the film Spirit Games with my fellow peers. My favorite part of this whole experience was the beginning of the movie just because it already put such an excitement within me and made me more eager to continue to participate and be more open minded as well as a thinker through out watching the film. I also really enjoyed how the film made it very direct to share the background history and the background knowledge of the whole sport and where it originated from. The way the film played out was just so organized and so beautifully detailed and the directors definitely  knew how to balance out the sport and the culture of the sport. I want to say thank you to the organizers of the program to arrange for us native youth to be able to be introduced to this wonderful and elaborate film.

To start this post, I want to acknowledge the talented and loved woman who created the film, Gale Ann Kelley. I am so amazed and am so proud of the message from Gale and the Iroquois, it is so important for Native people to share their stories and make a change and they’re doing just that. This tribe of many others on the east coast, are and inspiration for other tribes and reservations around the U.S. and Canada. We are all one people, and I definitely support the change that is going to come.

In the film, the Pope was talked about a lot and the Doctrine of Discovery was one of the main concepts also brought to the conversation. As the fight to remove the Doctrine of Discovery from our U.S. democracy, there is and will be a lot of obstacles and many hardships. Indigenous people have been disrespected for centuries and the battle continues, I pray that someday the Pope will hear my fellow Native People, and hear our war cries finally.

I also want to talk about one of the questions that were asked tonight when Gale was doing Q & A tonight. The question was “Do females play Lacrosse in the Iroquois?” and of course Gale gave a beautiful answer explaining the power of women and why they honor their traditions and don’t play the game. I want to also touch base on this and share a few lessons that I was taught and the concerns people have today about our Native American historical teachings with women. Growing up I was taught that women are very powerful beings, and are our peoples life givers. To not get in to deep and disrespect my culture, I am only going to explain it in a simpler way. In certain ceremonies of my culture and many other Indigenous tribes, women are not allowed to enter or participate when they’re on their moon time. In other words, on their period. In this growing, strong feminist country, it is hard for some people to understand our work. I encountered someone who couldn’t understand no matter how many times I would try to explain the concept. In our traditional world, women are very sacred and its important to think of it in this way to protect them. During their time, their spirit is very powerful and for protection, it is a sacred tradition to keep them safe. To me, it is very empowering and makes me feel like a strong Native American woman.  I am blessed to be gifted these certain teachings and I guess the message I would want everyone to know if they don’t agree with certain teachings of Indigenous people, is that women are powerful beings and there is really no disrespect in wanting to protect them because they’re vital to the earth and a gift from the creator.

Hy’shqe

Panamea

Thank you,

Katherine Jefferson (Kat)

“Spirit of the Game” is an accomplish documentary in which it shows the Iroquois game that has been past down for generations in their nation. The Iroquois team kept their honor and respect for the team, not only that but also displaying a good respect to their teammate.

Wednesday July 12th                                                                                     -Marisa Sosa

Currently its the end of day 2. It’s been an awesome day my highlight of today was watching the amazing movie Game Sprit Pride of a nation. Its the best thing seeing our people doing big things such as creating a movie to educate those who are not indigenous. I loved seeing in the movie how the native people Huadanesaunee were so much involved with keeping the tradition of lacrosse still in the game. The biggest part of the film that is going to stick with me as long as I remember. Is when the Chef of the tribe went to visit the Pope and the security made him take off his head gown because they looked at it as a weapon. It made me tear up that the majority of people are still not yet fully educated about our culture, and to also say to him that while he left it outside it would be taken care of. As they walked out and seen that his head gown was just sitting on a table un watched. This action is a great disrespect not just to him and his people but to all ingenious people. the film in a whole was a very great film and hope to go home and share and educate my people back home with the film. I  want to thank Gale Anne for introducing us to the wonderful film.

07/12/17

Today we had the honor of seeing the documentary: Spirit Game- Pride of a Nation. This documentary really moved me. I felt very strongly about this film and I am grateful Gayle Ann Kelley was able to be there with us and answer question at the end of the film. This film was about how the Iroquios National Lacrosse Team went through their journey of competing in the 2015 Box Lacrosse Championships and all the hardships they went through to compete. I was very shocked about all the discrimination these Indigenous people went through but also felt proud that they kept their heads up and did not sink down to the levels of the people that put them down. Many parts of the cinema stuck out to me, but one part in particular was when all the other national lacrosse teams got their passports signed with the Iroquois Confederacy stamp but, Canada out of  all nations refused to do this. I was disappointed and felt quite embarrassed that first of all, I did not know about this. And secondly, that Canada puts themselves out to be so open and accepting no matter what race, nationality or gender someone is, yet they denied this simple gesture to the Iroquois people. I have never not been proud to be a Canadian Citizen, but after seeing this film, it made me feel ashamed of my nationality.

-Sylena

When I saw the trailer for this film, I thought it was going to be about the history of lacrosse and interviews of hall of fame players. Unfortunately, I wasn’t expecting much from it. But that immediately changed when I watched the first ten minutes of the film. I loved the feeling and compassionate of not of just the sport, but of what the sport meant to the players and how it represents their nation. I felt very connected to the elders, former and current players because of theirs beliefs and how lacrosse should be played with a clear mind. The players did not allow their personal conflicts with opposition interfere with their performance. It was really important to stay disciplined and focused. What really upset me was the issue of the Canadian Team not allowing the Haudenosaunee People to stamp their passports even when every other nation compromised and accepted that they were their own nation.

Spirit game was a very well produced movie to my opinion. The sound tracks and the background music were on point. The footage captured in the movie were very moving it inspired me to do more research and find out the origins of certain things that i like. the movie also inspired me or gave me hope on making my own movies/documentary