Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. I'm Nyla Boudou. We're here on a Saturday with

another episode of our hard-truth series, a year-long project examining systemic racism

in the U.S. Today, we're looking at sports and lacrosse. The game was actually invented

and played by Native Americans as far back as the 12th century. The Eroquois people called

it a medicine game. It was spiritual, which isn't the predominant image of lacrosse today.

People view the game as this rich, white, preppy sport that if you play, you belong to this club.

You have these privileges, not so much the individual, but just power view in the game

and who's participated in the game over the past decade or so, even longer.

That's Lyle Thompson. You might not think of lacrosse players as huge sports stars, but

if there's one, it's Lyle. The Native American star plays for the Eroquois Nationals. He

holds several NCAA records, was just signed to the lacrosse Premier League. He even has a

Nike sponsorship. At the age of 28, Lyle is considered one of the best players in the world.

And the Eroquois Nationals are one of the best teams in the world. But despite all of this,

he and his Eroquois teammates have been blocked from some of the sports' biggest global tournaments.

That's why he's fighting to get lacrosse and his team recognized at the 2028 Olympics.

A lot of people don't even know that this is a Native American game.

They're still places I go and people sign up for my events. They know who I am,

but they don't know the game where the game has come from.

The game of lacrosse is really ingrained into our culture and everything I've learned

as far as my cultural values and our traditions within the longhouse and the things my father

and my mother tried to instill in us came from the game of lacrosse, my experience with

the game.

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