Published on Dec. 10, 2021 in the Tulsa World Magazine
or hundreds of years, Indigenous North Americans played the “Creator’s Game,” lacrosse, as a way for them to learn their places in the world.
Lacrosse — which began as stickball — is a game with sacred and humble origins that is now played worldwide, according to Justin Giles, staff curator for the Museum Management Program at the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Giles is a Muscogee Nation citizen from Broken Arrow who has played lacrosse for a Division I college and professionally for an Indigenous national team. He grew up with the Muscogean story of stickball, learning that the Creator gifted the sport to all human beings. Giles also helped encourage the rapid growth of lacrosse as a competitive sport in the Tulsa area.
For many Indigenous tribes from all over North America, such as the Iroquois Confederation (also known as the Haudenosaunee) and the Five Civilized Tribes of the southeastern United States, stories told of the Creator using lacrosse to teach tribal citizens that they had a purpose.
As I learned growing up, the “first” lacrosse game was played long ago between the land animals and the birds.
The Bear, strong and overpowering; the Deer, fast and agile; and the Great Turtle, steadfast and sturdy, played for the land animals.
The Owl, wise with keen sight, and the Eagle and Hawk, both nimble and good at making quick turns, played for the birds.
According to the Muscogean version of the story, just before the game was to begin, two small animals, a bat and a flying squirrel, approached the land animals and asked to play with them. Although they had wings, the two animals had been rejected by the birds because they were furry.
The Bear and the land animals took pity on the bat and the flying squirrel.
After the game began, the land animals made the bat and squirrel sit out, though, until the land animals realized the bat’s wings would come in handy against the birds.
Once it got dark outside, the bat was the only one who could see the goal and scored the winning goal for the land animals.
“That story is about how everyone has a place in society,” Giles said. “We use the game and story to find out who you are.”
Giles first learned stickball from his mother’s teachings of Muscogee culture. Stickball sticks adorned the walls of his family home, and even from a young age, Giles was interested in the game.
“One of my first memories was asking what those sticks are,” Giles said.
After his family moved to Virginia, he really only was able to play with his younger brother or when they traveled back to Oklahoma as there were not many Native American children where he lived.
In elementary school, Giles read a book for a report about the history of lacrosse and its origins in the Haudenosaunee and he immediately identified with it.
“After that book report, I told my parents, ‘I don’t want to play soccer anymore,’” Giles said. “‘I want to play lacrosse.’”
So, Giles started playing lacrosse.
On a family trip back to Oklahoma when he was in sixth grade, Giles was practicing lacrosse in the yard when an older Native American man asked what he was doing.
Giles told him he was playing lacrosse.
“Lacrosse?” the man said. “We play stickball out here.”
After that, Giles remembered thinking, “I’ll show you. I’ll bring lacrosse to Oklahoma.”
Little did Giles know, he actually would help lacrosse grow in Tulsa.
After high school, Giles received a scholarship to and was the first Native American to play lacrosse at the University of Virginia.
During college, Giles also played for the Iroquois Nationals, a professional lacrosse team comprised of Indigenous players and organized by the Iroquois Confederation. Giles even went to Japan with the Nationals to play in the World Lacrosse 19-and-under championships.
Giles’ journey is part of a larger movement within lacrosse in which Indigenous people are reclaiming the sport that was literally taken away from them.
From the late 1800s to as recently as 1990, Native Americans and First Nations citizens were not allowed to play lacrosse in either Canada or the United States.
According to the Smithsonian Institution, in 1880, the National Lacrosse Association of Canada banned First Nations people from playing “officially on the grounds that the Indians were paid ‘professionals’ not eligible for ‘amateur’ sports.”
In the U.S. in the 1930s, the USA Lacrosse Association banned Native Americans for the same reasons.
It wasn’t until the Iroquois Nationals debuted in the World Games in Perth, Australia, in 1990 that Indigenous North Americans were able to play the sport they had created.
Since then, Indigenous people have started the resurgence of lacrosse within their communities.
But Indigenous people aren’t trying to keep lacrosse to themselves. The reclamation movement is about sharing the sport with all of the Creator’s people and teaching everyone they are important in society.
“We’re taking the game back, but not in the way of ownership,” Giles said. “We want to share it with the world, but we want to make sure people know where it comes from. It’s a sport for the people, made by the Creator for the people. This is an Indigenous game.”
Giles said once people know that aspect of lacrosse, it becomes more than a game. It’s history, culture and education.
And, under Giles’ leadership, the sport has taken hold in the Tulsa area, with multiple area schools and clubs participating in the sport.
“It’s been amazing to be a part of the growth and to see the torch being passed to these other kids,” Giles said.
After Giles moved back to Oklahoma to take a position as the assistant director of the museum and cultural archives at the Muscogee Nation, he set about bringing lacrosse here.
“As I’m driving back (to Oklahoma), I just start Googling ‘Tulsa lacrosse,’” Giles said. “All I could really find was the Tulsa Youth Lacrosse website.”
Around 2011, Giles connected with the founder of Tulsa Youth Lacrosse and started developing the leagues by bringing in his college coaches and leaders in the lacrosse community to have clinics in Tulsa.
Soon, though, Giles ran into some problems. The schedule competed with baseball in the spring, and parents and coaches who wanted their children to be one-sport players limited recruiting options.
“In Oklahoma, it really goes: God, country, football,” Giles said. “And not necessarily in that order.”
The biggest obstacle Giles noticed were football coaches not wanting their players to get injured playing another sport like lacrosse.
Wanting to persuade football coaches to let their players compete in lacrosse, Giles set up a meeting with Jenks High School’s famed late head football coach, Allan Trimble.
“He just looked at me and straight up went, ‘Well, what do you want with me?’” Giles said.
Giles then explained that lacrosse is not a contact sport like football, but it does have enough contact that football players can get that practice in during the offseason.
Giles also mentioned how much running was involved in lacrosse, and that’s when Trimble started to take interest.
“‘I know you got some linemen that need to run,’” Giles told Trimble. “That’s when his ear perked up.”
After convincing him that lacrosse can help develop athletes, Giles helped start the Jenks lacrosse club.
Once Jenks got its club, everything started falling into place for lacrosse in the Tulsa area.
Clubs started popping up from Broken Arrow, Giles’ hometown, to Owasso, which produced in 2021 Oklahoma’s first Division I college lacrosse player, Trey Goins.
“To see that growth is humbling and exciting,” Giles said. “Especially from my own state.”
Now, lacrosse in Tulsa is bigger than ever. Jenks, Bixby, Broken Arrow, Owasso, Union and Cascia Hall high schools all have varsity clubs, and the Tulsa Alliance Club lets students from other area schools play lacrosse.
Giles said the trajectory for the sport is still on the rise.
“At one point, lacrosse was an East Coast, white, elitist game,” Giles said. “But now, it’s getting spread out across the country.”
With Oklahoma’s heavy Native American influences, an Indigenous-created sport like lacrosse will be able to take root and grow.
“Like an ice storm in Tulsa, it’s gaining momentum,” Giles said. “The future of lacrosse in Oklahoma: I see Friday night lights in the fall for football, and Friday night lights in the spring for lacrosse.”