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A Touching Article about the Haudenosaunee and Team Ireland

(FLN readers, never forget what this sport truly is about)

via the Buffalo News, March 7th, 2022, by Sean Kirst – photo by Derek Gee, the Buffalo News

(Caption of the picture: Claudia Jimerson of the Cayuga Nation, a member of the board of directors for Haudenosaunee Nationals lacrosse, with her stick near the rapids above Niagara Falls.)

Sean Kirst: At St. Patrick’s Day parade, celebrating gratitude shared by Irish and Six Nations

Excerpt:

The annual St. Patrick’s Day parade ignites a joyous electricity in Buffalo, civic elation Mark Burnam once soaked in first-hand, if in slightly different form. He was a fixture on the Buffalo Bandits indoor lacrosse teams that won a couple of championships in the early 1990s at the old Memorial Auditorium, where Burnam remembers the ear-splitting roar of the title-hungry faithful.

Thirty years later, as a coach whose life ties together many communities, he plans to return to Buffalo for the March 20 parade, formally resuming for the first time since 2019. Burnham, born into the Mohawk Nation, has been involved for years with the Haudenosaunee Nationals, formerly the Iroquois Nationals, the international lacrosse program representing the Six Nations.

Column: A selfless lacrosse gesture allows the Iroquois to take on the world

In a display of true lacrosse spirit, Ireland’s national men’s team gave up its slot at the 2022 World Games to the Iroquois Nationals team.

He began as a player and is now a Florida-based coach with the 19-and-under team that will play this summer in Ireland. His feelings on a Haudenosaunee presence in Buffalo’s parade are summarized by the Cayuga Nation’s Claudia Jimerson, a coach and board member with the Nationals:

“This is about peace and friendship, about respecting differences and seeing each other as full human beings, and that’s what lacrosse can show you,” said Jimerson, who checked a schedule, saw that her daughter Jalyn does not have a game that day with Syracuse University, and said it frees their family up to be in the parade.

Read the rest HERE

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