Iroquois Lacrosse Team Cleared to Fly, but Denied Entry to UK

July 14, 2010— -- Despite the help of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team was denied permission to travel to England due to a passport dispute with the British government.

As a result, the team will miss a world championship lacrosse competition in Manchester.

The team has been stranded in New York City since Sunday because U.S. officials refused to recognize the players' Iroquois Confederacy passports and British authorities would not allow them to come to England without a guarantee that they would be allowed to return to the United States.

The State Department granted the team a one-time waiver Wednesday that would have allowed them to travel on the tribal passports after Clinton intervened on their behalf, according to State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.

But the British government is refusing to allow the team to travel to England using passports it does not recognize. A British Consulate spokeswoman says the team would be able to travel only with documents the United Kingdom considers valid, according to the Associated Press.

Tonya Gonnella Frichner, a member of the Onondaga Nation who works with the team, says it was told by British officials that members would have to use American or British passports in order to travel to Britain.

The Iroquois are credited as one of the first tribes to invent and play lacrosse, according to USLacrosse.org. When the game was first invented is not clear, but the earliest European settlers to the Great Lakes region observed the natives playing a form of lacrosse.

The team, which represents the sovereign Iroquois nation in upstate New York and Ontario, Canada, was originally scheduled to depart New York Sunday night. But the State Department said it would not allow the Iroquois back into the country on their Iroquois passports as they have always done in the past.

The State Department had previously offered to issue U.S. passports to the players, who declined as a matter of principle. U.S. officials agreed this morning to honor the tribal passports instead.