It’s a typical Thursday night, and the Onondaga Redhawks are practicing. The players are between the ages of 21 and 35. Watching them is a revelation. Their style lacks the organization — or is it stuffiness? — of the game played at the Carrier Dome. But they compensate for it with grace and natural ability.

 

It’s as if the sticks are an extension of their hands. The ball zips around the box so fast it’s tough to follow the action. There is likely enough ability here to draft a Division I lineup, but a majority of the players remain unknown to the average fan.

 

Despite their talent, almost nobody on the team played collegiate lacrosse. Or went to college at all.

 

Freeman Bucktooth, the Redhawks’ assistant coach, watches the team with emotions ranging from frustration to sadness. His son Brett played lacrosse at Syracuse from 2003-06. He sees players on the Redhawks who could have excelled in college lacrosse but couldn’t conquer the academic hurdle. ‘They never had a chance,’ he says, shaking his head.

 

Then he looks across the arena. A group of elementary school children are fiddling with their lacrosse sticks. A smile crosses his face.

 

‘They have a chance,’ Bucktooth says with a glimmer of hope and pride in his voice. ‘They will go to college. Things are going to change.’

 

To understand why so few Native American students go to college is to dissect a culture that has lived in this area for thousands of years.

 

Onondaga is a sovereign nation of roughly 2,000 people living on 7,300 acres of land just 10 minutes from the Syracuse University campus. They are one of six groups that comprise the Haudenosaunees, better known in the United States as the Iroquois. They are also one of the few Native communities that still have traditional chiefs, faithkeepers and clan mothers.

 

The Onondagas value history and family above all, and they have remained private and protective of their culture. Their commitment to these ideals has allowed them to survive while other Native American nations have disappeared.

 

‘If it comes down to community and family versus education, it’s going to be community and family, no questions asked,’ said Regina Jones, an assistant director in SU’s Office of Multicultural Affairs who also runs the Native Student Program.

 

Decades of exploitation and abuse created an intense skepticism of the American educational system. This mistrust led to apathy and a general lack of knowledge about how to even pursue an education off the reservation. 

 

As a result, there are countless Native lacrosse players who never made it to college. Syracuse’s current roster contains two: Cody Jamieson and Jeremy Thompson, who both faced difficult roads before arriving.

 

But there is now a growing belief on the Nation that educational opportunities are coming. It has been four years since Chancellor Nancy Cantor created the Haudenosaunee Promise, a scholarship program allowing Native students who meet certain criteria to attend SU for free.

 

Cantor is quick to point out that the scholarship is not an entitlement, but a way to honor the growing relationship between SU and the nearby Native communities. To be eligible for the Promise, a student must be a certified citizen of one of the six Haudenosaunee nations: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca or Tuscarora. More importantly, the students must meet Syracuse’s admission requirements and standards.

 

The scholarship has already been a shift in attitude regarding college. Bucktooth says the Native communities consider Cantor a hero.

 

No longer does education seem unattainable. Bucktooth did not consider college until his junior year of high school, when former SU lacrosse coach Roy Simmons Jr. offered him a scholarship. That, he says, will not happen anymore because the Promise has firmly planted the notion in the minds of Native American children.

 

‘What this has done is make students say that they don’t care if nobody helps them or believes in them,’ Jones said. ‘They say, ‘Syracuse University says I can go to college.’ You wouldn’t believe the difference it has made in all our Nations.’

 

Haudenosaunee communities have mistrusted American education for decades, dating to the turn of the 20th century, when the U.S. government forced Native children off the reservation and into boarding schools. 

 

‘A lot of them never come back,’ said Neal Powless, a counselor for the SU Center for Career Services and a Redhawks player. ‘When they come back they’re different. They don’t know what it means to be Native.’

 

Nowadays, the Onondaga Nation feeds into the LaFayette public school district. The combined junior and senior high school has 400 students altogether. Approximately 25 percent of them are Native. The Onondaga Nation School, an all-Native K-8 building on the reservation, is also considered part of LaFayette’s district. 

 

Danielle O’Mara, the Native American liaison to the LaFayette district, said this ‘generational trauma’ will never completely disappear.

 

During an interview earlier this month, Jones pointed out a Native American student’s science project that sought to compare the effects of rain water versus bottled water on plant growth. The pots were marked ‘sky water’ and ‘The Man’s water.’ 

 

‘We’re always going to mistrust the United States,’ Jones said. ‘We’re going to mistrust people that aren’t Native. That goes back generations. It’s part of who we are.’

 

That inherent mistrust makes Cantor’s job even more difficult. There is a fine line between accessibility and exploitation. That’s why Syracuse University has hesitated to push the benefits of higher education onto younger children. 

 

‘We have to be very respectful of autonomy,’ Cantor said. ‘We don’t want it to look like we are appropriating their culture. It has to happen naturally.’

 

It is starting to. Cantor said she feels a mutual trust forming, but it will be a long process that cannot happen in just three years. 

 

Even as skepticism has started to wane, many Native families are still unaware of the steps required to go to college. Thompson needed a year at Onondaga Community College, a season of box lacrosse in Canada and then another year at OCC before he was cleared to play at SU. 

 

Though he started in the LaFayette district in fifth grade, he did not realize he needed to maintain certain grades to play lacrosse in college. He knew nothing about the NCAA Clearinghouse until it was too late.

 

The LaFayette administration is trying to combat this problem. Principal Paula Cowling and O’Mara started an advisory board intended for Native parents to ask questions about the college process. The most common request was to start teaching about the Clearinghouse at a younger age.

 

‘They still need to take an active role to make sure they are checking the website, taking the right courses, making sure they’re passing,’ O’Mara said. ‘We can show them everything, we can give them all the information, but it is still up to that child to do what he has to do.’

 

Cowling said experiences like these are teaching her the motivational power of lacrosse on Native students. 

 

Tom Turner, Thompson’s former special education teacher at LaFayette, called lacrosse the ‘greatest carrot dangling in front of these kids to get them into college.’

 

And sometimes even that isn’t enough. Only the most dedicated and determined players, such as Thompson and Jamieson, fight through the barriers. The rest slip through the cracks.

 

Mike Abrams, a member of the Redhawks, falls in that category. His brother Marshall played at SU from 1997-00. Mike played two years at Herkimer Community College but did not pursue an opportunity to continue his career. He instead left school to become an iron worker with his father. 

 

‘I didn’t like school too much,’ Abrams said. ‘It was hard. I couldn’t balance the work and lacrosse.’

 

Even for lacrosse players who reach college, it is sometimes difficult to find the motivation to continue. When he arrived on campus, Thompson said he felt lost and confused — caught between the two worlds. He wanted to keep playing lacrosse, but the safety and comfort of his life on the Nation beckoned.

 

Thompson, like many Native American students, wants to spend his life on the reservation. College hasn’t always seemed necessary or worthwhile.

 

Perhaps the most challenging part of Jones’ job is convincing students like Thompson to remain in school. She believes it is possible to combine education with Native customs. Difficult, but possible.

 

‘Jeremy sat there and wondered, ‘Why am I here?” Jones said. ‘My answer was, ‘Get your degree. You can do whatever you want after that. You can go learn your language, you can spend time with your elders, learn how to do ceremonies. You can have both.” 

 

SU lacrosse coach John Desko delivers a similar message to his Native players. During the fall semester of 2008, former SU defender Sid Smith came into his office and said he was quitting the program. College was too difficult. He needed to be back on the reservation with his family.

 

‘I said, ‘Sid, you don’t understand what you represent to your people and your culture,” Desko said. ‘You can do both. I told him to keep going to class, and we’re going to find a way to get you graduated.’

 

Smith heeded his coach’s words and played an integral part of SU’s national championship runs in 2008 and 2009. He remained in school this year after exhausting his NCAA eligibility, and Desko said he expects Smith to graduate in May. 

 

Smith, Thompson and all the Native players who have made it to college represent possibility. Desko said former players have been the best tools to inspire younger Native American students to pursue a college education, and he expects them to become more integral moving forward.

 

Lacrosse is still the easiest avenue for Native American students to go to college. But it seems that umbrella is starting to spread beyond athletics. Jones constantly explains to the students that the reservation needs educated people.

 

The Onondagas recently installed a waterline on the Nation. Abrams said they had to hire outside engineers because there weren’t Native engineers to do the job.

 

‘We need our own people doing these things,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t be looking to the outside.’

 

More importantly, Jones said, they need educated people to ensure the Onondagas do not lose any more land or rights.

 

Change comes slowly on the Onondaga Nation. The attitudes and beliefs have been the same for thousands of years. But expectations are changing. Native American students are starting to believe they can go to college.

 

It will always be difficult. There will always be a clash between two worlds. The key is finding a way to combine the two into something meaningful.

 

‘Our values and our culture are our foundation,’ Jones said. ‘No matter what you learn, no matter what you know, you carry those values with you. That will never change.’