Team USA’s Indigenous presence awaits its future as Team Canada readies for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Native American athletes will aim for future Olympic representation, while Team Canada will have a quartet of Indigenous athletes primed to compete in the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games.
The Games officially kick off July 26 with the opening ceremony featuring athletes from around the world representing their home countries. Team USA will field nearly 600 competitors but has no athletes known to be of Native American descent.
A U.S. Olympic spokesman told Indian Country Today, “We do not have any athletes who have identified as Indigenous.”
However, Native American athletes in the U.S. are working toward the 2028 Olympics, especially now that lacrosse has been accepted as an Olympic sport.
The Haudenosaunee Nationals’ women’s and men’s lacrosse teams hope the International Olympic Committee will grant them an exception to compete as a nation for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
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According to NPR News, the IOC has said only countries with a National Olympic Committee are eligible to compete. The U.S. and Canadian Olympic committees would decide whether to allow the Haudenosaunee Nationals to compete.
President Joe Biden voiced his support for the Haudenosaunee Nationals last year.
“Their ancestors invented the game,” Biden said. “They perfected it for millennia. Their circumstances are unique. They should be granted an exception to field their own team at the Olympics.”
The Haudenosaunee, or Five Nations, comprises the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk nations.
As soon as 2026, Team USA could have Native representation in the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina Italy. Abby Roque “grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, but her tribe, Wahnapitae First Nation, is from the Sudbury area of Ontario, Canada,” according to USA Hockey. She was on Team USA’s women’s hockey team for the 2022 Games and will vie for a spot on the 2026 squad.
“It’s great to be able to talk and teach about my Native American culture and of our specific community’s culture,” Roque said in an article on USA Hockey’s website. “When I left, I didn’t realize how small the numbers were of Native American hockey players, so for me, it’s doing all I can to help do things to allow hockey to be more inclusive.”
While no mainland Native American athletes will be competing in the Paris 2024 Olympics, three Native Hawaiian athletes will represent Team USA this year: Carissa Moore (surfing), Heimana Reynolds (park skateboarding), and Micah Christenson (volleyball).
Team Canada’s Quartet of Indigenous Athletes
For this year’s Summer Games, Team Canada will have at least four Indigenous competitors: wrestler Justina Di Stasio, swimmer Apollo Hess, diver Margo Erlam, and men’s volleyball player Fynn McCarthy.
Get to know a little bit about each of them:
Justina Di Stasio (Norway House Cree Nation)
In February, Di Stasio, 31, earned an Olympic wrestling berth in the 75-kilogram weight class at the Pan American Olympic qualifiers in Acapulco, Mexico. She’s a two-time medalist at the Pan Am Games, taking a silver medal in Toronto in 2015 and a gold medal in the 76-kilogram event in Lima, Peru, in 2019.
She also won a gold medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England. She won the 76-kilogram bronze at the Olympic test event for the 2020 Tokyo Games, but she didn’t get a chance to compete at the Olympics because she failed to qualify.
Di Stasio will be looking to make her qualifications count because she plans to retire from the sport to focus on the teaching career she started during the pandemic.
“Being Indigenous is something I am proud of, and I carry that pride in everything that I do,” she told Indian Country Today.
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Apollo Hess (Kainai)
Hess, a 21-year-old swimmer from Lethbridge, Alberta, qualified for the 100-meter breaststroke at the Olympic swimming trials. Last year, he finished third in both the 50- and 100-meter breaststroke at the U SPORTS championships before moving to Toronto to focus on the sport at the High-Performance Centre in Ontario.
He told CTVNews he participated in multiple sports, but swimming became his favorite.
“I suffered a series of pretty bad concussions from football and hockey, and I kinda made a decision when I was 13 to stray away from those kind of contact sports,” he said.
His mother, Ingrid Hess, told CTVNews she’s proud of her son’s accomplishments.
“I’m told he’s the first member of the Blood Tribe to ever make the Olympics, so that feels like something really monumental, and I feel like the whole community is celebrating,” she said.
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Margo Erlam (Métis)
Erlam, 21, qualified for Paris at the Canadian diving trials in May at Windsor, Ontario. She won the women’s 3-meter springboard event, earning enough points to meet Diving Canada’s Olympic qualification criteria.
Like Hess, Erlam left home to continue her training. At 16, the University of Saskatchewan student moved from Calgary to train with the Saskatoon Diving Club.
In an interview on the Canadian Olympic Committee website, Erlam said that she only became aware of her Indigenous background a couple of years ago and discovering her family history and culture has been a powerful process.
“So being able to learn more about this and be at this level [of sport] where I can teach more people about Indigenous culture and hopefully get more recognition for Indigenous kids in sport is really important to me now,” she said.
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Fynn McCarthy (Métis)
McCarthy is one of 12 members of the Canadian men’s indoor volleyball squad. The team earned a spot in the Games with its second-place division, finishing in a qualifying tournament in China last year.
McCarthy, who is from Lake Country, British Columbia, and his teammates will try to help Canada improve its eighth-place finish at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Familiar with France, McCarthy was once a middle blocker for a professional team in Montpellier.
He has worked with the Canadian National Team program since his teens. Last year, McCarthy, 24, was one of six Indigenous athletes to receive a Bitove Indigenous Award from the Canadian Olympic Foundation.
“As an Indigenous athlete, my community and identity mean everything to me,” McCarthy said in an interview on the Canadian Olympic Committee website. “They are a huge source of strength and motivation. Being Indigenous is a source of pride and a reminder of the responsibility I have to inspire future generations.”
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How to Watch the Summer Olympic Games
The opening ceremony is available on NBC, Peacock, and the NBC and NBC Olympic apps. Live streams of Olympic events will be available on NBCOlympics.com, NBC.com, the NBC app, and the NBC Olympics app.
HEADER IMAGE: Courtesy @justinadistasio