Hall of Fame resists Native recognition

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Mike Mitchell, the former elected chief of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (near Cornwall, Ont.), will have to draw on his many years of experience with political maneuvering to accomplish his latest goal.

The lacrosse enthusiast has run into resistance from the west coast lacrosse establishment as he tries to get the number of Aboriginal players in the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame increased to a level that he feels truly reflects the contribution of Aboriginal people to the game.

Mitchell's difficulties have been mainly in British Columbia where the national shrine is located. In the east, the governors of the newly-constructed Eastern Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in St. Catharines, Ont., have made it easy; every single name put forward for induction was automatically accepted.

Two years ago, Mitchell contacted the leading lacrosse-playing First Nation communities in Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec and the Iroquois communities just south of the Canada-US border in New York State whose teams play in the CanAm Senior "B" league. He asked local sportsmen and recreation officials to do the research and come up with the names of deserving nominees - something the communities pursued with a vengeance.

As the Aboriginal representative on the Canadian Lacrosse Association's executive board, Mitchell pushed his colleagues on the sport's national governing body to right what he sees as an historical wrong. He gained a certain amount of support within the CLA but then found that the selection committee for the New Westminster-based national hall wasn't prepared to induct a large number of Native players and builders despite the fact that, of the 108 builders and the 217 players who are already in or are slated to be inducted this year, Mitchell says there are only four Aboriginal people in the hall - or barely one per cent of the total.

The First Nations Committee to Induct Native Players to the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame, of which Mitchell is the chairman, has recommended that 180 Aboriginal builders and players be considered for induction over the next three years.

Mitchell readily admits that First Nation communities and teams have not kept the kind of records that non-Native organizations have kept. That's something that gives the selection committee cause for concern, because they feel they have a responsibility to keep the standards for entry at a high level to preserve the value of hall of fame recognition. The recording secretary of the national hall's selection committee, Randy Radonich, a well-respected, dedicated volunteer who wears a multitude of hats in the B.C. lacrosse scene (including commissioner of the Western Lacrosse Association), says Mitchell was prepared to accept a compromise - a special section for Aboriginal players. But the selection committee rejected that option.

"The board decided there could be no special section," Radonich said. "They feel that if they allowed it they'd have to have a special section for Portuguese people; a special section for Black people. The hall of fame is for all people."

The committee acknowledges that the number of Aboriginal hall of famers is probably too low, although one of their members - Stan Shillington, a hall of famer himself and generally regarded as the most knowledgeable lacrosse man alive in the area of statistics and records - believes the number of Aboriginal people in the hall is higher than the four that Mitchell cites. Either way, Radonich says, they believe the low number of Aboriginal hall members is not the committee's fault. Past attempts to solicit nominations from First Nations communities met with little or no response.

Mitchell doesn't dispute that point, but he says that when the committee uses it as an excuse to do nothing, they're ignoring the long history of oppression, racism and antagonism that has separated First Nation communities from the Canadian mainstream. The committee is also refusing to take into account the cutural differences of peoples with oral traditions of record-keeping, Mitchell says, a position that he sees as intolerant, even approaching racist.

Radonich gets angry when it's suggested that the board's point of view is racist.

"It hurts me to be called a racist. Look, we are only the administrators of the hall. The present members inherited this board and the one thing they agree on is that they cannot restrict by race. It's the absolute opposite of racism. There can be no special consideration for any group," he said.

Mitchell says he's seen and heard it all before. It's a point of view that is popular with Reform Party members who also can't figure out why their calls for "equal treatment" are interpreted as intolerance.

"We've been excluded for so long. There's been an exclusive attitude up to now and we're asking that it be changed to inclusive," Mitchell says. "I think it makes sense to take a pro-active stance on this, but they don't see it. They don't see that there's anything special about this situation."

Indigenous leaders from every corner or the globe argue that attempts to impose "equal treatment" on their people is further assimilation, further colonialism. Saying "no special rights" is a benign-sounding excuse to deny a people their right to have their own cultural identity.

A lawyer with an intense interest in Constitutional law and the rights of minorities to freedom from the oppression of the majority, says that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes and legally mandates the rights of Aboriginal people to be cultural distinct.

Andrew Orkin, a human rights activist in his native South Africa before he emigrated to Canada and earned a law degree, says he doesn't know a lot about sports but he knows there is racism and anti-Aboriginal thought in Canada.

"How can sport be any different?" he says. "Racism in sport is proven. It's up to the sports governing bodies to prove they're not racist. It's up to them to prove their poliies are non-racist not only in intent but in result. They must have the courage and decency to admit there's a problem and to do something about it."

Orkin points out that a 1996 Supreme Court of Canada decision (R. v. Van der Peet) makes it the law of the land that Aboriginal people should not be expected to conform and assimilate with mainstream Canadian culture. The law also makes it quite illegal for those in the mainstream to exclude or punish Aboriginal people if they refuse to conform.

The Van der Peet decision says quite decisively that any insistence by the hall selection committee to refuse "special treatment" to Aboriginal people is out of touch with the law of the land, Orkin says, especially when it concerns the game of lacrosse which is a traditional Aboriginal game.

The court said, in part: ". . . the doctrine of Aboriginal rights exists, and is recognized and affirmed by [the Charter] because of one simple fact: when Europeans arrived in North America, Aboriginal peoples were already here, living in communities on the land, and participating in distinctive cultures as they had done for centuries. It is this fact, and this fact above all others, which separates Aboriginal peoples from all other minority groups in Canadian society and which mandates their special legal, and now Constitutional status. [emphasis in original]"

Mitchell knows all this. He's just got to find a way to make the selection committee understand. They meet regularly with a meeting scheduled for this month.

"I guess I'll have to go out there," Mitchell says. "I'm going to keep after this. I think it's worth it."