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Ollie Raboteau is a senior at Cleveland High School. In coming weeks, he’ll cover Portland Interscholastic League sports from a student perspective. This story is the debut of a new initiative by WW to develop young voices in journalism.
“Representation matters.” For J.D. Elquist, that driving principle applies at the global, local and spiritual levels.
As an Alaskan Native, Elquist, 37, shares this principle with local Indigenous youth through the sport of lacrosse, which was invented by Native Americans.
Elquist, who lives in Tacoma, founded Pacific Northwest Native Lacrosse in 2004. His organization arranges free camps, clinics, and travel teams for Native players throughout the Pacific Northwest and parts of Canada. It will hold its first Portland camp in April, in cooperation with Lewis & Clark College women’s lacrosse.
“One of the most important things for Native communities in the modern world is sovereignty,” Elquist says. “We ourselves are our own people. Representation matters.”
With lacrosse due to return to the Olympics in the summer of 2028, there has been much debate over who should be allowed to represent their nation globally in the sport. The Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois) have had their own national team since 1983. Despite being ranked third globally by World Lacrosse—the sport’s international governing body—the team has not been recognized by the International Olympic Committee
Many believe they should be at the Los Angeles Olympics. Former President Joe Biden expressed his support. So too has Elquist, who is an orthodontist when he isn’t coaching lacrosse.
“The medicine of lacrosse works on non-Indigenous people, too,” Elquist says. “We want to proudly proclaim that we belong to this game and that this game belongs to us, without excluding other people who want to play. Lacrosse is for everybody, but if you love it, you have to understand where it truly comes from.
“It’s not enough to be Native kids playing this game. We need to represent our culture. This club exists to help us step back into who we are. This is about being who we are as people. We play our music and bring our cultural and spiritual practices back into the game. Lacrosse comes second.”
Little Eagle Horn, 17, represents the Lakota and Cowichan tribes on two teams. He’s a top player for Elquist’s Pacific Northwest Native Lacrosse travel team and for Grant High School in Portland.
“The game is very special to us,” Horn says. “It’s always there for us.”
When playing for Grant, Horn stands out not only for his stick work, but also as the only Native player on his team and often on the entire field.
“Most of the kids you see around lacrosse are not Native,” Horn says. “That’s not a bad thing. It’s just a lot of Native kids don’t have the funding. It’s become a very expensive sport.”
Horn, a Grant senior, says that in the Metro League, which Grant Lacrosse plays in, he knows of fewer than a handful of Native players, including himself. Only 0.5% of the student population of Portland Public Schools is American Indian or Alaska Native, the least common category of ethnicity districtwide.
In fact, Horn is the only player on the Pacific Northwest Native Lacrosse travel team to hail from Portland Public Schools, although there are several players from Liberty High School in Hillsboro, Lake Oswego High School, and Mountain Side High School in Beaverton, all in the greater Portland area.
Horn stresses that Native lacrosse players are playing to entertain the Creator and, therefore, are responsible for keeping the game friendly and clean, as well as trying to honor the cultural and spiritual traditions of the medicine game.
“It’s important to play with a good mind and a good spirit,” Horn says.
While Pacific Northwest Native Lacrosse may focus on cultural awareness and representation, they also succeed in the wins and losses column. So far, they have entered two tournaments and reached the championship game in both. The team plays a free-flowing and creative brand of lacrosse that is as fun to watch as it is effective.
“It requires a pretty high level of lacrosse IQ,” Elquist says, “but we have a group of players who love the game, and we can trust them just to go out there and play.”