Iroquois Roots Rugby

On the grounds of the former Mohawk Institute, where colonists would force Indigenous youth to speak another language, change their clothes, shave their hair and suffer unimaginable cruelties, many ending in death, a truly remarkable rugby session took place. 

The Iroquois people are not Canadian, nor are they Americans. They are their own sovereign nation of people, part of North America’s original inhabitants before European colonialism. They are the Six Nations formed of the tribes: Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga and Tuscarora.

Originally, ironically like its rugby namesake, it was a quintet. The Five Nations of the Iroquois were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca nations. These five tribes all spoke the Iroquois language among their own dialects, and they settled across the north east of North America, their territory stretching throughout Canada’s Quebec and Ontario provinces, and down as far south as the modern-day Kentucky and Virginia states, in the USA. 

The Five Nations of Iroquois added the sixth Indigenous tribe to their league after a bloody battle with white settlers. In 1722, a terrible conflict displaced the Iroquois-speaking Tuscarora into the desolate northern lands. There, they found common ground and allegiance with the five aligned Iroquois groups and joined them. Years on, the cultures of the First Nation tribes still exist, and remain important, coming to the fore in sport recently in a sea change that saw the rebranding of famous American sides that had adopted ‘American Indian’ tropes. The ripple effect was felt closer to home too, with Exeter Chiefs eventually reimagining their ‘Chief’ to something English rather than American. 

Iroquois Roots Rugby were among the voices pushing through change, but their story goes far beyond campaigning for socially acceptable – and non-offensive – branding. The story of the Iroquois people takes place across southern Ontario, the most densely populated chunk of Canada. Here, since, 2017 at the Six Nations Sports and Cultural Memorial Centre Grounds in the reservations’ central hub town of Ohsweken, rugby has been an inclusive activity that brings First Nation people together. 

Every Sunday throughout spring and summer, the mother and daughter driving force of Mel and Meg Squires, coach more than seven underprivileged First Nations children, free of any charge. The children come to Iroquois Roots Rugby camp from a far-flung community stretching 190 square kilometres, twice the size of Ireland. 

Rugby is respite from a home that is void of everyday essentials and littered with social issues. Unsafe water is siphoned from a tank at a bi-weekly cost of $130, public transport is non-existent and every spring countless houses are flooded due to the reservation’s swampland foundations. Drugs and alcohol abuse are an unfortunate factor, due to the generational trauma instilled by the barbaric Residential School system, who only closed their doors as recently as the 1970s. 

Mel Squires grew up on the aptly named Six Nations Reservation on whose land the rugby camp is held. She’s called it home for the majority of her life. Canada’s largest community of Indigenous First Nation people is located just an hour south of Toronto. However, the reservation is a far cry from the modernity of Canada’s largest city, and Mel knows the trials and tribulations of Six Nations life all too well. “There’s a tonne of social issues that people here face, that our neighbouring municipalities don’t face. Well, a lot of our land here that we were given to live on, it’s very swampy. So, you’ll have homes flooding every spring when it thaws. So, people are living with several feet of water in their basements and they’re having to pump that out. That causes things like mould spores that you shouldn’t be breathing in. So, people have respiratory issues because of that.

“Indigenous people in Canada have the highest rate of diabetes among Canadian people,” she continues. “And I think that’s just because our traditional diet is nothing like the diet that we have today and I just think our bodies can’t handle those types of things. Diabetes is huge on the reserve, if you drive around our community, there’s posters and campaigns about eating healthy and diabetes education, and stuff like that. You probably wouldn’t see that anywhere in other towns that you’re driving in.

“Just having a public transportation system would be so beneficial to people in the community,” adds Mel. “And I think a lot of people would take advantage of it. It’ll be interesting to see if it does come to fruition and how and what it would look like, because we’re so spread out. I don’t know how far you would have to go to get to a stop and, like, how do you get there? That’s a long, long walk, if you’re going to just a certain stop on the reserve.”

The reminders of the challenges facing the people are literally writ large everywhere you go here. “There’s also lots of posters and billboards around the reserve about drugs and alcohol abuse,” explains Mel, “because we do have a very, very high rate of substance abuse on our reserve. And we have, unfortunately, we have deaths, so many per month, because of substance abuse. 

“I think if you’re driving around our reserve, if you’re an outsider, you would notice those things. And you would say, ‘Wow, why is there such a big billboard about diabetes education, or drug use, or alcohol use and stuff like that?’ So that’s very different in our community, I think. And like I said, we just have all of those different social issues, and a lot of them stem from not having clean drinking water, right?”

Despite the obvious presence of challenges, when tragedy hits it still hits hard, as Mel’s family discovered earlier this year. “In January of this year, my niece died from a drug overdose,” she says. “And so, she left behind my little nephew. So yeah, it affects all of us. And I could say … my neighbours could say the same, and their neighbours could say the same. 

“It’s hard when it happens so much in one small community like this, because, you’re still dealing with your grief, but then you’re trying to help your neighbour deal with their grief, and your family, your extended family deal with their grief. Everybody knows everybody here, so when something happens in the community, it affects everyone ... it just happens so often it’s hard to come up for air.

“I think we’ve always had substance abuse challenges,” she continues. “The only change is the substances. Like we have the scary drugs that are taking people’s lives now. We’ve always had a lot of alcoholism in our community and within our families, and that stems from oppression, it stems from the Residential School system. It stems from all of that Canadian Government oppression.” 

The Residential Schools that Mel refers to, were set up by European colonisers who saw the First Nation cultural traditions as threats to the ‘New World’. In the 1820s, the first Residential Schools were established across North America, to eradicate these cultures from their new-found society. Indigenous youth across the United States and Canada were taken from their family tribes, and heinously punished within the walls of these institutions. 

Retaliation was a death-sentence, as Indigenous youth were forced to abandon their cultural dress, shave their native hair and unlearn their mother tongues. An estimated six thousand indigenous lives perished in these tragic times, with the skeletons of the era still visible across North America. Some researchers believe that the actual number of lives lost may in fact be closer to fifteen thousand yet accurate records are scarce, and continue to be unearthed. 

One such Residential School was the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, just a seventeen-minute drive from Mel’s home on the Six Nations Reservation. Opening in 1828, the institute was among Canada’s oldest and longest-running Residential Schools, with an end called to its oppressive history as recently as 1970. The ominous cracked entrance pillars still stand to this day, and act as treacherous reminders of the dark tales that it holds. 

Over half a century after the Mohawk Institute closed, Mel and Meg drove up to the very same pillars, the institution that once housed Mel’s grandmother – she thankfully survived her thirteen-year stay, despite being taken in at the age of just three – and took a one-off rugby session. Mel and Meg were accompanied by an entourage of Indigenous youth, who wanted to use the joys of rugby to re-claim this once oppressing land. “Going into that session, I definitely shared the same feelings that the youth shared: unsettling and uneasy to go on to that space,” says Meg. “Knowing what we do know about the Residential Schools, and in understanding that there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know [as well]. Taking the words that my mum [Mel] has said, and being able to reclaim that land, is something that we’re seeing a lot more of, especially now, after all the findings on the Residential School sites.

“I was really fortunate to attend an event this year that was private for Residential School survivors, through my work. And I said to myself, ‘If the survivors can come back to this school, and they can reclaim this land, after seeing what they saw here, then I need to take that same energy and do that myself going forward with not only the work that I do, but how we present the work that we
do, to our youth. 

“It honestly is really empowering to go to that site, and to do what we did. Looking back and just remembering the games that we played and the laughs that we had, and allowing ourselves to let go of that unsettling [feeling]. Also allowing the kids there that were with us to have that same experience and be kids. 

“I think that’s really important for Indigenous youth: just allowing them space to be kids, no matter where we are, is something that I really hold with me everywhere I go, due to that session that we had at the Mohawk Institute.”

The findings that Meg makes reference to, are led by the Survivors Secretariat. This organisation is attempting to unearth the true damaging extent of the Residential Schools, and bring closure to families whose ancestors had died in the systems. The Mohawk Institute stretched for a staggering 9.7 acres, and after searching through just 1.5 per cent of the grounds, 97 deaths have already been uncovered in the mass graves on site. 

“Being there that day with all of the kids, they were standoffish about being there. About being on the ground, on the field there, and on the grass.” 

Mel led the opening team huddle that day, and had to convince some of the young players to take to the pitch for the rugby activities. “One girl did say, ‘My grandpa told me when I was coming here today, not to go by the apple trees, because something bad would always be taking place near those trees’. So, she said that in a group. And we [the Iroquois Roots rugby coaches] were all like, ‘We’re still here today because all of our ancestors that went to the school survived it’. But there’s so many people that didn’t survive, didn’t come home from those schools.

“I said, ‘They [our family members who survived] wanted us to have lives that they weren’t able to have as children. So, let’s make them all happy, and run and play, because that’s what they would want for us’. 

“As soon as we had that conversation, we went right into our rugby camp. And we all had a pretty good day after that. I think that if we ever go back to do a camp there, I think it’ll start to grow on people. We can come here to this site, and we can do things, and walk away happy. 

“It obviously is a depressing place, but it doesn’t have to be that way. For us here today, it’s almost like a reclaiming of that site, that depressing sight. We’re reclaiming it now to make it something different, and something that we can use, enjoy, and be on the land.”

Outside the entrance to the Mohawk Institute, rows of children’s shoes are laid out in memory of those lives which were lost inside the walls. Decorated pebbles inscribed with ‘Every Child Matters’ act as solemn reminders of the atrocities which took place against the Indigenous people across North America. The former Residential School remains standing, alongside the Woodland Cultural Centre. “It’s a museum and educational place,” says Mel. “And I worked there as a summer student, I worked as the curators’ assistant.

“Right beside us was the Mohawk Institute, and we had offices in there: the Mohawk language office was still in there and operational. And they still had the cafeteria open down there in the basement. So, from work at lunchtime, we would all go in there [the Institute] and eat in the cafeteria. 

“It’s just now not open to the public because they’re refurbishing it because the survivors have asked that it not be torn down. I think most of the other Residential Schools in Canada have been torn down or burned down or stuff like that, but our survivors are asking that it remain standing, and I think it’s going to be more of like, you can probably do tours of it once they’re finished.

“It was around then that I found out that my grandmother went there,” continues Mel. “It was very strange. And even now when I go there, I’ll see myself looking in the windows and wondering like, what would kids be seeing when they look out those windows, or what would be happening within those walls? And I do, I always stand there and take a few moments to think about it when I go there. 

“Even when I was there the other day with the [Rugby Journal] photographer I was like, there’s this one window up there that like I don’t know why, but I have a really creepy feeling every time I look at it. But yeah, I do always take a few moments to look at the building and just kind of reflect on what my grandmother may have gone through there. I’m standing there today because she survived it, and not everyone did.”

Mel considers her grandmother to be one of the lucky ones, who went on to live a happy life, a rarity for such a scarring childhood. Mel explains how the Indigenous survivors would often turn to alcohol or other substances to ease the pain, yet her grandmother was able to hide her challenging past, leaving Mel oblivious to her upbringing at an early age.

“The horror stories that you’re hearing now come out from the survivors, and in terms with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the TRC. They’re all very real. You know, some kids died in these schools. You hear about abuse, physical, mental, sexual abuse that was happening in those schools, you hear about malnutrition and starvation. 

“It was probably worse than jail at that time, I would say, and it was just children that were growing up that way. So, you can imagine if you’re abused for years and years, when you leave those schools, like you would probably want to try and forget or try and move on. But how do you do that? 

“Where people say that substance abuse is what’s stemming from that, you’ll hear a lot of survivors say that too. They’ll say, ‘I just started drinking, just to numb and just try to forget whatever it was.’ So, if one of your family members came home from the Residential School and started drinking, you’d probably have problems within your family due to drinking. It just spiralled and it’s intergenerational trauma that’s being passed down. And there’s a lot of people trying to stop the cycle of that trauma now. It’s still prevalent here and within our families, for sure.”

Mel and Meg have grown Iroquois Roots Rugby from the ground-up. The two take great pride in their ground-breaking Indigenous-led programme of enjoyment through rugby, and understanding of their ancestral culture. Meg leads the charge out on the pitch, while Mel teaches the youth the curriculum of First Nations heritage and history. Meg’s journey in rugby began aged fourteen in the ninth grade, she instantly fell in love with the sport, and quickly achieved provincial representation for Ontario. 

At seventeen, she received a rugby scholarship at the renowned Shawnigan Lake Private School on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. She then joined McMaster University and won the Canadian Inter-University Sport National Championship in 2015, before beginning her coaching career with the Norfolk Harvesters U7 minis and U17 girls. This then led to opportunities with the Brantford Jesters Sevens programme, and co-establishing Iroquois Roots Rugby alongside her mother. “In 2017, my mom and I decided we were travelling a lot to introduce the sport elsewhere,” explains Meg. “And we kind of came to the conclusion of ‘why are we not doing it at home?’. So, we did a pilot project here in the community, and took it and ran from there. 

“We started with junior girls and our numbers were very, very small. But we stuck with it. My mom was the backbone of keeping it going, and giving us the motivation to continue to do this project. But for me, I have done so much with the sport and I have seen so much, due to this sport. I felt I owed something to it.

“Understanding that there was not really an Indigenous athlete in Canada, in rugby, to look up to, especially for the women, that’s kind of where my passion comes from. I think girls and youth in my community deserve to have those opportunities as well.”

For her unfaltering efforts within Indigenous youth sport, Meg received the 2018 Grassroots Ontario Coaching Award, and was named as the National Indigenous Coach of the Year for 2019. 

For her part, Mel takes charge of the cultural elements of the group’s teachings. This off-field curriculum is what makes Iroquois Roots Rugby unique, as Mel enlightens the Indigenous youth, and strives to find out more about her people. From the Mohawk language, to the ancient origins behind games and crafts, Mel discussed culture in all forms. “There was a period of time in Canada, when it was illegal for Indigenous people to practice their culture, or even speak our languages,” she explains. “So, much of it was lost in a span of about 100 years. 

“I’ve been really learning about our own culture for the past couple of years now. And I was fortunate to grow up with grandparents who are fluent Mohawk speakers. And we did have it a bit in our schools growing up as a child. 

“Anything I learned about the culture, I preserve it, and I share it with youth in our communities, in hopes to revive all of our culture and bring it back. And hopefully, kids will be able to gain perspective on their own identities as well so that they can move forward in this world.

“We do a moccasin workshop, where we’ll make our traditional shoes. Sometimes, they’ll ask for medicine pouches, so that’s something that we would make. It carries our medicines, like tobacco or white sage, traditional medicine that we pick from the forests. We also make wampum belts, which historically for Iroquois people, is how we tell our stories, or how we document historical events, such as treaties. So, we’ll do one of those workshops as well, and those are quite popular.”

Two years after Iroquois Roots Rugby was founded, the group played their first games, becoming the first all-Indigenous rugby team from the province of Ontario. The rhythmic tapping of metal studs on concrete, harmonised the eager crowd, who had gathered around the dew-soaked touchlines of Fletcher’s Field in Markham, Ontario. 

In the most unassuming of environments, this quaint and socially run ‘Great North Sevens’ event, marked the first on-field chapter of Iroquois Roots Rugby. Two U18s teams, of boys and girls, took to the pitches in freshly pressed kits, to represent the team and their ancestors. “That was our very first tournament, and it was phenomenal,” recalls Meg. “Although it was only about an hour’s travel for us, we made a weekend of it. We got a sponsorship that paid our hotel room for us, so that was amazing for the kids. To have like a pool to go swimming in and everything like that, and to bond as a team. It was amazing just to see [our] teams there wearing jerseys that say ‘Iroquois’ for the first time.  

“We had coaches from other teams coming up to us and wanting to meet us, and encouraging us to keep going. And we obviously didn’t bring home a cup or anything like that, but just the experience alone, I think, on and off the pitch, that weekend was something that we will always cherish for sure. 

“And I think even the kids who are now senior players, will still be talking about that tournament probably for the rest of their lives. So, it was absolutely significant to us, and it’ll always be something really special.”

The young Iroquois Roots Rugby stars progressed quickly.  “From the first game to their last game that they played, was just an absolute ‘180’,” says Mel. “Like, the very first games that the kids walked onto the pitch, they didn’t even really know where to stand, you know, to line up to receive the ball or anything. They were taught, but they just got out on the field, and were looking at each other, and like, were not confident looking back at us. 

“As the game started, they were fumbling with the ball, and not knowing who would be going into the scrum. And as the day went on, you saw it kind of clicked for them. They would kind of remember, okay, we went through this, we’ve been through this, and they were encouraging each other. ‘Remember, we did this in practice, let’s remember all of the things that we were taught’. 

“One player called Trevor, he scored our very first try, and I have a very horrible, blurry video of it, that I was just taking with my iPhone that day. But we always seem to get that back onto our social media every now and then, and replay that for everybody. I can even just picture him in my mind, seeing him run the ball in, and how he put it down and everything. So that’ll always be very special to us as well.”

Mel and Meg are supported by a fantastic framework of volunteers, including a partnership with the University of Toronto, and rugby league side the Toronto Wolfpack. Meg’s partner is Wolfpack halfback Greg Wise, who bridged the gap between Iroquois Roots Rugby and the former Super League team. 

Members of the Wolfpack have come down to the camps, to inspire the young players for a career in the sport. Wales-capped Rugby League prop Matty Barron joined the Wolfpack after the 2021 Rugby League World Cup, after Toronto had folded out of the Super League at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Their last match was an 18-0 defeat to Huddersfield in the Challenge Cup, and to mark their first fixture in 556 days, the Wolfpack took on Washington DC Cavalry, and began their new venture in the inaugural Canada Cup. However, a kit mishap caused Toronto to turn up without any attire, yet Mel’s Iroquois Roots Rugby were on hand to save the day. “It’s fantastic what Mel does,” explains Matty. “And it just so happened that our shirts, our jerseys hadn’t come in for the game versus Washington DC, so we actually wore Roots jerseys for that game. I actually thought was quite fitting given that, it’s First Nation land we all live and work on, and play rugby on.

“On the back of that I got chatting with Meg and Mel, and we looked to deliver some coaching sessions down on the reserve there and meet the programme, and that’s how we got together.”

The Canada Cup marked a special occasion for Iroquois Roots Rugby, with Mel fondly recalling the day’s excitement in Toronto’s Lamport Stadium. “It was the Canada Cup, our kids could go there. They were VIPs, and the [Toronto Wolfpack] guys actually wore our Iroquois kit. They actually played our [Iroquois] national anthem and the kids got to walk out on the field. The kids still talk about that day.” 

“So, they did a curtain-raiser. I believe they played tag rugby before the game,” explains Matty. “Then they did a presentation as well at halftime, which was really good for the programme. And they actually got to pick … well, they call them MVPs here, ‘most valuable player’, but like the Man of the Match basically. 

“It was good to see, one: how good they were at rugby, because the programme delivers fantastic core skills. And two: to watch some of the rugby was awesome. So that’s where I guess the partnership was made.

“I found it quite refreshing actually, because it’s taught, as I understand at a very young age, respect for each other. That’s the First Nation philosophy, if you look out and [have] respect for each other, have respect for the land and what the earth gives us. They’re just very respectful young people. It made being involved in coaching just that much easier.” 

One of the main goals for Iroquois Roots Rugby, is to inform communities across the world that Indigenous First Nation cultures still exist to this day. As Mel looks to the future, she remembers a key social movement that helped put the Indigenous Iroquois people on the rugby map. 

In 2021, Mel shared her story amid the Exeter Chiefs rebranding saga, which led to the Premiership Rugby team dropping the branding in favour of today’s ‘Celtic Iron Age Dumnonii Chief’.  “We were pretty vocal on the Exeter Chiefs branding,” she explains. “I even did a radio spot in the UK, right before they decided to change it. So, we were very vocal about that online. I just envisioned doing a tour to the UK, and then maybe we got tickets to the Exeter Chiefs game, and our kids would be so excited to go. 

“Then if they sat in the stands and then [fans] dressed like this stereotypical Indigenous person, with war cries, like stereotypical war cries seen from movies, I just thought that our children sitting there would feel like less than, or dehumanised, or like they’re being ridiculed.

“Yeah, I do applaud them [Exeter],” she admits. “I applaud them for a rebranding, because I know that they really didn’t want to have to do that. So, I hope that as we continue on, we’ll start to see the fan culture change, and sort of take on the new branding that they were hoping for.”

Iroquois Roots Rugby also want to expand their reach on the rugby pitch, both through Canada and to represent their ancestors on the international stage. They aim to bring the sport to the most isolated Indigenous communities, starting with northern Ontario. Mel’s ambition is to host rugby camps on these remote reservations, but current funding makes the 800km journey into the wilderness a financial challenge. “They don’t have health services in their communities, they have maybe a thousand people,” says Mel. “They don’t have road access, they are fly-in remote communities. They don’t have clean drinking water, they don’t have mental health services. We consider ourselves very lucky and we know that our hardship is much less than anything our communities north of us are facing. 

“Unfortunately, because of the high price of flights into the communities, we still haven’t been able to get there. It’s our goal, though. And we’ve been in conversation with a couple of communities and they’re keen on having us. 

“It’s upwards of $2,000 per person to fly from Toronto, into a northern hub and then fly on a smaller plane into these communities. So, we just don’t have that type of funding. We’re always applying for funding to hopefully be able to get into these communities, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

Mel closes out this window into the Iroquois world, with a discussion on Roots Rugby’s plans for future growth. The group aspire to progress their programme along with other developing rugby nations, and line up exhibition fixtures throughout the Americas and Caribbean islands.  “We’re taking our junior programme to a tournament in Wisconsin this year in June,” she explains. “So that’ll be our big international tournament. We would love to be able to take our sides and play other countries that are developing their rugby programme as well.

“Trinidad and Tobago have actually just reached out to us, the president of Trinidad and Tobago rugby, because they’re developing as well. And she’s keen on having us play, either there or here. 

“So that’s something that we really want to start looking into, you know, having our kids get that experience and sort of even introducing who we are to the world, because it might sound silly, because you’re just sitting here talking to me, but a lot of people don’t even realise that we (Indigenous First Nation people) still exist. 

“If you look in history books, or even if you Google, it talks about us as people as past tense. So even just introducing ourselves to the world as to who we are, and that we’re still here, and we’re still holding on to our culture, our languages and stuff like that, is something that we really would love to start doing.

“That is really my goal. It’s not [only] to play within Canada, it’s to play other developing countries, other nations that we wouldn’t have otherwise even met before, heard of even because we’re isolated, or who have even heard of us.

“So that’s the kind of experience that I’m very excited to start giving our kids. Let’s go somewhere, let’s meet some people, let’s talk about our culture. That’s the kind of thing that I want to be happening.”

Story by Tom Sansom

Pictures by  Jennifer Roberts

This extract was taken from issue 23 of Rugby.
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