An Interview with Rex Lyons | Pt. 1: The Creation Story

An Interview with Rex Lyons

Pt. 1: The Creation Story

On sovereignty, Climate change, Family, Identity, and of course, Lacrosse

I’ll be honest. When I joined the One Bowl team this summer and learned I would be spending most of my time working with a film about Lacrosse, I was a little hesitant. I signed up to work on films about indigenous rights, not sports! Soon, I came to realize that for the Haudenosaunee, Lacrosse and indigenous rights are one and the same. Rex Lyons’s impassioned, emboldened, and yet off-the-cuff interview solidified this notion within my mind. He explained to me, 

“Just to give you an idea, when you're born and you're a male, you're one of three things, you're either a Speaker of the Language, which means you're carrying on the language and doing the ceremonies, or you're a Singer of the Ceremonial Songs, or you’re a Lacrosse Player. That's how fundamental lacrosse is to our culture… I had a stick in my hand before I could even walk. In the crib, they have the little crib sticks that the boys get at birth. And on the other side of that, when it's my time to go to the Creator's world, I'll be buried with my wooden stick, and that's a great comfort to me."

Below is a visual representation of the connection between Lacrosse and the Creator’s world, as well as another beautiful quote from Rex on this topic. 

#IroquoisNationals #TogetherAsOne #SovereigntyMatters #LandAcknowledgement #CreatorsGame