This article, as told to Matt Hamilton, appears in the April edition of US Lacrosse Magazine, which includes a special 10-page section featuring faces and voices of the Native American lacrosse community. Don’t get the mag? Join US Lacrosse today to start your subscription.

I’m an enrolled tribal member of the Muskogee Creek Nation, which is where our tribal capital is — a little bit south of Tulsa, Okla. In the mid-1800s, we had the Native American removal act which forced us to relocate from the Alabama area to Oklahoma, where it resides now. My Dad is a full-blood American white man, if you will, from Pittsburgh.

Growing up, part of our home teachings was my mom giving us all our historical lessons of where we come from as indigenous and Native peoples. One of the first things I remember my mom talking about — we’d see pictures of paintings of the early stickball sticks, or ball sticks.

I remember doing a book report in fourth grade and realizing that there were other forms of stickball. I didn't really realize lacrosse was lacrosse until that book report. Some people told me that lacrosse was being played here now. One day I came home and said ‘I’m playing lacrosse next year.’

Growing up in Northern Virginia, near D.C., my brother and I were the only Native kids that we knew. We stuck out like sore thumbs. People always asked ‘Are you Hispanic? Are you Puerto Rican?’ When I was playing youth football, people always thought I was black because they could only see my legs.

When I started playing lacrosse, all my friends that were around me were cool guys. They said ‘Yeah, you’re Native American and you play lacrosse. That makes sense.’ Even though it wasn’t my tribe that played it, I felt pride in playing.

In seventh grade, I started getting talk from other kids like ‘Who does he think he is?’ I never took offense to it really. I was like ‘Yeah, you’re playing our sport.’ I started to get things — I always had the ponytail — things like ‘Pull his hair. Shave his head.’ I got that every once in a while. I was always surprised. ‘Why was that a thing?’

It wasn’t until high school that I came to the thought that ‘Yeah, you’re playing our sport. You should be lucky to be on the field sharing this game with us.’ I knew that I was stepping onto the lacrosse field not only representing myself and my own tribe, but for me, it was this extra sense of — native people played this sport and I came from a Native lineage.

I remember one division final and I was having a great game and I got the ‘cut his hair, pull his hair’ comment like that. I kind of snowballed where the other team started shouting it, then my mom had to deal with it in the stands. I got home and she said ‘That was a horrible game.’ I said ‘We won.’ She said in the stands she had to ‘quiet’ people up because there was one guy in particular screaming from the stands ‘That guy is running around like a damn Indian. Somebody trip him up.’ My mom had to turn around and tell him that I was a Native American. I could take that because I’m the one on the field, but when people had to affect my mom, that's a whole other thing.

My freshman or sophomore year of high school I found out that there was an Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team. From the start of high school, my goals were to A, play lacrosse at the college level. But really my one goal was to play for the Iroquois Nationals. How cool would it be to play on an all Native team?

After our state championship my senior year — that next morning we drove up to Onondaga in New York and my little brother and I tried out for the Iroquois Nationals. I didn’t think it was a big deal to do that, but they let me know after the tryouts that they didn’t know how to receive me because they’d never had a non-Iroquois person try out for the team. I said ‘Well, I have a scholarship and I’m going to the University of Virginia and I’d love to play for this team.’ Later, I got a call that said they changed the rules and said we met the requirements because we were Native lacrosse players. I basically peed my pants. It was awesome.

Our two tribes having been sharing culture for almost 1000 years. That cultural exchange of playing with the Iroquois Nationals was one of the best things that have ever happened in my life.

People sometimes don’t see Native people as people in terms of the population of the United States. The reason we’re not looked at as real human beings or citizens because a lot of the times in school systems we’re taught that Native people are people of the past. You talk about the Washington football team, Cherokee vehicles, mascots that don’t seem like a big deal until you get this less-than-human attitude toward us.

I want to make sure that I’m one of the voices that put out where this game comes from and that there are variations to the game, as far as the indigenous perspective goes. It really is a medicine game and a lifestyle.