Native American lacrosse stars bring medicine game to heal protesters at Dakota Access Pipeline

From left Scott Marr, Lyle Thompson and Bill O'Brien at Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota (Photo by Scott Marr)

Native American lacrosse players and activist athletes, Lyle Thompson and Bill O'Brien along with University of Albany head coach Scott Marr took a road trip to Cannon Ball, N.D., to bring social awareness to the North Dakota Access Pipeline protests while growing the game of lacrosse.

(Photo by Waniya Locke)

The lacrosse ambassadors made the 27 hour drive from upstate New York with 20 traditional wood lacrosse sticks in tow to spread the medicine game to the Native protestors. They visited with Native protestors who have been sprayed with tear gas and water hoses in sub-freezing temperatures and pummeled with rubber bullets. 

The Dakota Access Pipeline protests revolve around a tract of Sioux land protected under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. The pipeline is a $3.8 billion underground oil line that will connect North Dakota fracking grounds to larger refineries in Illinois. The Native protestors contest that the pipeline will go through ancient religous and historical land and also risk contaminating their local freshwater supply, if the pipeline, scheduled to run underneath the Missouri River, were to leak.

Bill O'Brien (left) and Lyle Thompson (center) with peaceful protestors in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. (Photo by Scott Marr)

Lacrosse, known as "The Creators Game", was designed as a medicine game to bring together and heal communities. The traditional wooden sticks are said to hold the actual, soulful medicine.

Artist Brian Larney

A lot of people know the Thompson Brothers as lacrosse players and athletes, but at the end of the day, Thompson Brothers Lacrosse is Native American people. So when we see injustice happening to our fellow Native people or any people really, it hits home an it makes us want to do something." said O'Brien.

Lyle Thompson in action with the University of Albany against Syracuse at the Carrier Dome on April 2, 2015. (Michael Greenlar/The Post-Standard)

"As a kid, I was taught you play the game for the Creator and it's meant to be played a certain way," Thompson said. "The harder you play, the stronger the medicine."