Sports
Lacrosse was one of many types of stick-and-ball games played by First Nations people at the time of contact with Europeans. Players use a stick about .9 to 1.2 metres long. The stick is curved at one end with a small net to catch, handle and throw a small hard rubber ball with great force.
In 1990, the first ever North American Indigenous Games were held in Edmonton, Alberta. It attracted approximately 3000 sport participants and numerous cultural performers from Indigenous communities across Canada and the northwestern United States.
Since 1990, the North American Indigenous Games have been held six times in various locations in Canada and the United States. The 2008 games will involve over 7000 aboriginal athletes and will be hosted by the Cowichan First Nation on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
Aboriginal people have been playing hockey for almost as long as there has been ice to play it on. The first hockey may have been played with carved one-piece sticks…[and] may have started as a winter version of an early type of lacrosse game that was invented by the First Nations hundreds of years ago.
The first hockey sticks were made in New Brunswick by the Mi'kmaq, over 100 years ago.
