When the Olympics Meet Sovereignty
A Century of Native Excellence
The 2026 Winter Olympics opened in Milan on February 6. For Native American and First Nations athletes, the Games arrived at a moment of both progress and disappointment.
Abby Roque, who made history at the 2022 Beijing Games as the first Native American woman on the U.S. Olympic hockey team, did not make the 23-player roster announced January 2. A member of the Wahnapitae First Nation, Roque now plays for Montreal Victoire in the Professional Women’s Hockey League. Her absence means the U.S. women’s hockey team took the ice in Milan without confirmed Native representation for the first time since her breakthrough four years ago.
Team Canada partially fills that gap. Jocelyne Larocque, a Métis defender who has won three Olympic medals, made Canada’s final roster and is competing in her fourth Games. If Canada medals, Larocque will extend her record as the country’s most decorated Native Olympian. Liam Gill, a halfpipe snowboarder from the Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation who competed in Beijing and modeled Team Canada’s 2026 Olympic gear at the November unveiling, did not make the team. Canada’s halfpipe roster carried no men’s entries.
The mixed picture fits a pattern stretching back more than a century: Native athletes have delivered some of the most dramatic moments in Olympic history, often while fighting institutional barriers alongside competitors.
From Stockholm to Tokyo
Jim Thorpe of the Sac and Fox Nation remains the only athlete in Olympic history to win gold in both the pentathlon and decathlon. At the 1912 Stockholm Games, he scored 8,413 points in the decathlon, finishing 688 points ahead of second place. King Gustav V reportedly told him: “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.”
Six months later, the Amateur Athletic Union stripped Thorpe’s medals after discovering he had earned roughly $25 per week playing minor league baseball. Many college athletes played under aliases to protect their amateur status. Thorpe used his real name. Native Americans were not U.S. citizens in 1912.
The restoration took 110 years. On July 15, 2022, the IOC reinstated Thorpe as the sole gold medalist and President Biden posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 3, 2024.
Billy Mills’ victory in the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics remains arguably the greatest upset in distance running history. An Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Reservation, Mills entered as a 1,000-to-1 longshot. In the final stretch, he broke past world record holder Ron Clarke of Australia to win in 28:24.4, nearly 50 seconds faster than his previous personal best.
Mills remains the only American to win Olympic gold in the 10,000 meters. Orphaned at 12 on Pine Ridge, he overcame poverty and suicidal thoughts to reach Tokyo. He later co-founded Running Strong for American Indian Youth.
Native Olympians Before and After Thorpe
The 1912 Stockholm Games featured significant Native representation beyond Thorpe. Lewis Tewanima, a Hopi runner who arrived at the Carlisle Indian School after federal authorities forced Hopi children into boarding schools, won silver in the 10,000 meters and set an American record that stood for 52 years.
Duke Kahanamoku, a Native Hawaiian, won gold in the 100-meter freestyle in 1912 and earned five Olympic medals across three Games. Clarence “Taffy” Abel, an Ojibwe hockey player, became the first Native American Winter Olympian and the first U.S. flag bearer at the 1924 Chamonix Games.
Canada has its own lineage. Alwyn Morris, a Mohawk from Kahnawake, won gold in kayaking at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. On the podium, he held up an eagle feather to honor his grandfather and his heritage.
The Haudenosaunee Question
Looking ahead to the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, a larger question looms. Lacrosse returns to the Games for the first time since 1908. The sport’s creators may be watching from the sidelines.
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, whose ancestors invented lacrosse roughly 1,000 years ago, has sought an exemption from the International Olympic Committee to compete under their own flag. The confederacy, comprising the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora nations, has operated as a sovereign entity for centuries with nation-to-nation treaties with the United States.
The Haudenosaunee Nationals men’s team ranks third in the world. Both teams have been full members of World Lacrosse since 1988, making them the only Native nation with such recognition in any international sport.
On January 17, 2025, President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau issued a joint statement calling for an IOC exemption: “Given the unique and exceptional circumstances of the Haudenosaunee’s historic connection to this sport… we believe that a narrowly scoped exception is appropriate.”
In June 2025, IOC President Kirsty Coventry, who took office in March 2025, ruled that eligibility decisions would fall to the U.S. and Canadian Olympic committees, allowing Haudenosaunee players to try out for those countries’ national teams based on their passports. The Haudenosaunee rejected the offer.
“We’re not going to go there as a gesture,” said Rex Lyons, a board member of the Haudenosaunee Nationals. “We should be there under our own flag, standing shoulder to shoulder. Not subservient, not playing in an exhibition game and getting a pat on the head. That’s not inclusion. That’s exploitation.”
There is precedent for exceptions. The Olympic Refugee Team has competed since 2016. In 2022, when the World Games initially excluded the Haudenosaunee from lacrosse, Ireland voluntarily withdrew to give them a spot.
The Haudenosaunee continue to press for their own flag. In December 2025, their men’s and women’s sixes teams swept gold at the Pan-American Lacrosse Association cup in Puerto Rico. The 2027 World Lacrosse Sixes Championships is expected to be a central part of the Olympic qualification process, but the full parameters have not been finalized.
Sovereignty Beyond Sports
From Jim Thorpe waiting 110 years for recognition to Abby Roque’s breakthrough and subsequent absence from Milan, from Billy Mills’ impossible victory to the Haudenosaunee awaiting a path to Los Angeles, the pattern holds: Native athletes prove themselves on the field, then face questions about belonging afterward.
The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics could break that pattern, or extend it.
The Haudenosaunee case raises a question that extends beyond lacrosse: should international sports bodies recognize Native nations that predate the countries now drawn around them? The IOC's June 2025 ruling deferred that question rather than answering it. Whether the Haudenosaunee compete under their own flag in 2028 may depend on whether Coventry's IOC treats sovereignty as a procedural problem or a historical one.