Image
By Sam Laskaris
Windspeaker Contributor
OTTAWA
Thanks to a new initiative by the Canadian Lacrosse Association (CLA) a campaign to raise awareness of the sport’s Indigenous roots is being launched across the country.
Starting with the 2018 season, which for some associations kicks off in April, a campaign called Honour Our Game will commence.
The venture is the brainchild of members of the national association’s Indigenous Development Committee.
The promotional campaign will see athletes and officials display an Honour Our Game sticker on their helmets.
Rusty Doxtator, who is in his fifth year of serving as the CLA’s Indigenous director, said a total of 85,000 stickers have been printed. The CLA has begun the process of mailing out the stickers to its members.
Doxtator is the CLA’s third Indigenous director. “I wanted us to be seen and to have people know we existed,” he said.
Doxtator said he was involved in a brainstorming session more than a year ago with the 10 other members of the CLA’s Indigenous development committee, one rep from each of the country’s provinces.
“We were looking at what we can do to have an impact on everybody, from the little Tykes to the Senior A guys,” he said.
A suggestion that arose was to have an Honour The Game campaign. Doxtator said game officials frequently tell coaches to honor the game during their pre-game introduction and handshakes.
Doxtator though felt the slogan would be more meaningful if it was slightly altered to Honour Our Game.
“It gives it more personality to the sport of lacrosse,” he said. “And it gives it more ownership to us (Indigenous people).”
Doxtator said it will cost about $16,000 to print all of the stickers and to then cover shipping costs to all lacrosse associations in the country.
Costs for the campaign are being covered by the Canadian Lacrosse Foundation, a charitable organization established by the CLA.
One of the foundation’s mandates is to assist with the celebration and the preservation of the history of lacrosse.
Besides shipping stickers to all of its associations across the country, the CLA will also include a letter with the campaign. It is hoped that all coaches will read that letter to their players.
The letter details what Honour Our Game is all about. It also explains the meaning of the sticker and stresses the importance of players recognizing the sport’s Indigenous roots.
“Especially for the younger guys we have a mission to tell them about the sport and show them where the game came from,” Doxtator said.
Doxtator said there was a bit of reluctance from one provincial association about the sticker campaign.
“We had one province that said they weren’t going to do it,” he said.
Doxtator was not willing to name which provincial association. He’s hoping those provincial officials will have a change of heart.
“They were worried about the glue from the stickers,” he said. “There is a helmet manufacturer that has a rule stating it will not stand by their helmets if they’ve got a sticker on it.”
Once they found that out, Doxtator said campaign officials ensured they made a sticker that would be approved by the Canadian Standards Association.
Besides choosing the name for the campaign, members of the CLA’s Indigenous Development Committee also came up with a logo for its initiative.
This logo has four important parts.
For starters, the slogan Honour Our Game is in the logo. Those words promote respect, reverence and veneration to the game of lacrosse.
Another important aspect is that the logo also includes the CLA’s logo.
Yet another component of the logo, on the bottom half, are a pair of eagle feathers. These not only acknowledge the sport’s Indigenous roots but also signify strength, power and respect.
And a fourth part of the logo is its double-ringed circle. That not only promotes the principles of community, fraternity and equality but it is also intended to show the game’s past, present and future.
Campaign officials are hoping that players from Canada will share photos of their stickers or other ways they are honouring the sport.
Players are urged to tag @LacrosseCanada on Twitter and to also utilize the hashtag #HonourOurGame.