Indigenous games postponed a year

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Buffalo, New York may still host the North American Indigenous Games (NAIG), but it won't be next summer. The games have been delayed a year after the games' governing council ended its relationship with the group that had earned the rights to host the games in 2005.

The NAIG council was expected to re-open the bidding to potential hosts after a scheduled three-day meeting in Denver May 13 to 15.

Another group in Buffalo may be awarded the games or it could go to another city.

The decision to postpone the 2005 games for a year was made by the NAIG council on April 23. That came after the council rescinded the hosting rights that had been awarded to the Buffalo Sports Society (BSS) on March 26. After that, NAIG council president Harold Joseph said three options had been considered. The council pondered whether to go with another host in Buffalo for 2005 with strict guidelines including a performance bond of $1 million, open the bidding back up and have the games in 2006, or take the loss of the games and focus on 2008.

"The games were taken away from the Buffalo Sports Society because of lack of documentation, actually," said Joseph during a phone interview from his office in Marysville, Washington on April 16. "In the bid process for the North American Indigenous Games, there's a process that you have to go through. If you bid, you get a bid package from the council. In it, it states exactly what you need for a bid. You have to put up so much money to make a bid, non-refundable. And then you have a deadline for when you have to have your package in."

In the 14-year history of the games, Canadian cities have fared the best. The last U.S. attempt to host the games, in Fargo, N.D. in 2000, was unsuccessful. While the games are supposed to be held every three years, alternating between Canadian and U.S. locations, the Fargo failure meant there was a five-year gap between games.

With the last two Canadian hosted games-in Victoria in 1997 and Winnipeg in 2002-considered successes, the pressure was on the U.S. tribes to come up with a winning entry. Four bid packages were submitted in 2001 for the 2005 games. Eventually, it was narrowed down to Oklahoma and Buffalo.

"The initial $1,000 that everyone put up to be in the running, everybody put that money up. Then when it came time to get your package in, I think it ended up only being two-Buffalo and Oklahoma," said Joseph. "When it came time to do presentations to the council, New York was the only one that was still in the running. So it was sort of a unanimous decision."

That presentation by the Buffalo Sports Society to the NAIG council was made in Saskatoon in 2002 and BSS was awarded the games.

But thousands of athletes and cultural participants are attracted from across North America to the games and hosting the event requires extensive planning and no small amount of organization. The NAIG council spelled out what it required of the successful bidder. It did so by setting a series of deadlines for the creation of organizational charts, a business plan, letters of intent for transportation, for housing athletes, for cultural villages, for support from Native communities in their state and from government officials at the city, state and federal level. Commitments for corporate sponsorship and concrete marketing plans were also required.

"When the first deadline came [BSS] had some of that stuff," Joseph told Sweetgrass. "They were supposed to have $1 million in bank and they didn't have but they had a promissory note from a Native-owned bank in New York."

The council allowed the process to continue.

"We let that deadline pass and then the next deadline came and went," he said. "In December, the council came up with a [memorandum of understanding] with BSS that they had to have these eight action items done by early February. That deadline was getting close and they weren't getting close to it.

They asked for an extension. Weextended it out to March 2. At that time, we got a letter from BSS that if we pulled the games away from them they'd go into litigation for money that they lost.

"When March 2 came and they were supposed to have all that stuff, well, we hired an attorney and she faithfully went to the lawyer for BSS and started negotiating them getting all that information to us. Well, when it came time for them to give us the information, BSS actually came back saying they wanted a letter signed by each member of NAIG council saying that we wouldn't discuss any of the materials that they would give us. None of the council members was going to agree to that. We ended up taking the hosting rights away on that basis. But that was just taking the hosting rights away from that group, not taking the games away from Buffalo for 2005."

Guy Patterson did most of the legwork for BSS. He said his board asked the NAIG council to not release any of the information because they were worried that a former member of the organization who was fired might try to use their information to submit a competing bid.

"We did all of the work," he said on April 20. "We didn't want the NAIG council to be giving that information to people that we have terminated."

Patterson said the NAIG council shares some of the blame for the paperwork being late, that documents he requested from the council arrived late or in a form that did not meet the requirements of New York State law. He said BSS will seek a court injunction to prevent any other group from hosting the games in Buffalo or anywhere else in the United States "in the next three to six years."

Rumors had been circulating that BSS has been the subject of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Joseph said he's heard the rumors, checked them out and found them to be untrue.

"What I know about a FBI investigation into BSS, it's completely false. The Seneca Nation who was backing BSS, that's where all the money came from for al the sponsorship. There were two major tribes in the state of Connecticut that were waiting for BSS to get everything together and they were going to donate a considerable amount of money-the [Mashantucket] Pequot and Mohegan tribes," he said.

Patterson also said he had checked and there is no FBI investigation. He said everything done by BSS was legal in New York and the rumors may have been started by disgruntled former employees.

He said the fact that he and his board members proposed to run the games and pay themselves to do so was seen by the NAIG council as a conflict of interest, but they did not intend to pay themselves any more than previous games' managers. He said the general manager of the Victoria games was paid $75,000 while the Winnipeg games' manager earned around $60,000. The salaries contemplated by BSS were in that range and local lawyers had advised BSS that the plan was not considered a conflict under state law.

He plans to appeal to Joseph and the NAIG board to reconsider their decision one last time in the near future.

With the decision, preparations all over North America will have to be reconsidered and possibly rescheduled.

Darryl Hill, executive director of the Ontario Aboriginal Sport Circle, said this summer's planned try-outs will more than likely be put off until next summer.

"I've put all Team Ontario preparations on hold at least until after the NAIG meeting next week," he said on May 5.