♪♪♪ announcer: Are you paying attention?

The films you're about to watch are part of the San Diego Film Weeks Documentary Block.

These films are made right here in San Diego, and address the topics important to all of us in our community.

We'll be watching these films and more on KPBS, or you can check them out on our streaming channel filmcontv.com.

Now sit back, relax, and enjoy.

♪♪♪ female: So the test is 25 questions, it's ultra-false, multiple choice.

male: Okay.

female: You can miss up to seven on the exam and still pass.

Once you pass, I will issue your certificate today and it'll be good for five years.

male: It all started really with Sandy Hook, seeing those parents on the news, realizing at the time my daughter was elementary school age.

It wasn't until the Vegas shooting.

I looked at my wife and I just said, "I don't know what an AR15 is, I don't know what an assault rifle is."

male: Re-aim, click, pull and hold.

male: Good, Charlie do you want eggs?

Dot wanted eggs.

male: Your number one responsibility as a parent is to keep your kids safe.

I'm not a politician or a public health official.

I'm not an activist, I'm not a journalist, I'm an artist and I'm compelled to engage in important issues.

male: That looks pretty good.

According to California law, this is the gun, this is the part that's regulated and that you need a background check to buy just this part.

There's a few things I would have to change in the way that I printed it, but it is potentially a functional weapon.

Most of these shooters are White males near my age and so you know, one of my good friends who's a former student, and she said, "It's gotta be from your perspective, you need to make this piece because you're a White male."

I'm feeling like I just wanna go at first very slowly and methodically, because I don't really know what I'm doing with guns, to be honest.

I've had two hours of one on one training, and I can count the amount of times I've shot on both hands.

I don't know if nervous is the right word, but just hesitant, I don't wanna make a dumb mistake.

I mean, I bought this particular gun, you know because of the conflict.

[gun shots] male: Oddly enough, this one makes me more nervous.

[gun shots] male: Yeah, I was definitely hitting.

I mean, these bigger holes are the nine millimeter rounds.

I think I did miss a good bit too though.

[gun shots] male: Art is often full of contradiction.

You know, the idea of using a weapon to make something beautiful, my goal is to get it one shot away from breaking in half.

I've just been thinking a lot about how really having a gun for self-defense seems to be more of an emotional decision than it is a practical one.

I know based on statistics and the science, that I'm not safer having a gun in my home, but yet I have this thing sitting here, and I can't help but think that I need it somehow.

male: Because, you know, the shotgun sprays.

Hey buddy, there he is.

Hey sweetie how are you?

female: Good.

male: I find guns for self-defense incompatible with my views as a Christian who's committed to nonviolence.

That's been, for me personally the biggest outcome.

And that's a family commitment for us now and had I not done this piece, I wouldn't have been forced to think about it.

♪♪♪ Sergey Gornushkin: So this sculpture is made out of concrete with mosaic, and it is just kind of funny that, you know originally I'm from Russia and was able to do a sculpture for a Russian restaurant here in San Diego.

Hello, my name is Sergey Gornushkin and I'm a San Diego based sculptor, focusing on large scale public art.

My story begins in the 1980s in the Soviet Union where it was first discovered that sculpture would be my calling for the rest of my life.

The parents over there did not have much time to spend with their kids as they had to work, so the idea would be to throw the kids into extracurricular activities besides regular public school, so that would prevent them from playing on the streets and getting into trouble.

Here, I build some of the most notable works for the county, which involves the kids hands on building these massive sculptures.

And this program involves me coming in for about three months and working with 42 students at a time, working on 10 large scale sculptures which will beautify the campus eventually.

The pieces combined ceramic elements, with metal elements, with mosaic elements, all of this work under my supervision.

At one of the schools that my mother threw me into, was an art school focusing on sculpture.

That was the first instance, the first moment that it was understood that I had abilities, which were somewhere above average or normal at the time.

The Soviet Union collapsed and my father had to make a decision whether to stay there or move to the United States.

He made the right choice and here we are.

This one's titled Seascape.

We used up about two tons of clay for this project, also about 35 to 40 students we're working on this under my direction and the theme was Marine Life.

The ceramic pieces are cut into a puzzle style pieces for ease of installation, each one mounted individually.

In the University of Florida, as I was embarking on a graphic design degree, I felt like I was getting lost, whether I wanted to do this, whether I wanted the digital media or graphic design but then taking sculpture classes at the university and finishing with a minor in sculpture at the University of Florida, gave me that direction which made me realize later on, that sculpture would be my number one occupation.

This sculpture was built for the 2015 Centennial Celebration of Balboa Park, celebrated here at the Delmar Fairgrounds in 2015.

The tower represents a replica of the California Tower, which is in Balboa Park.

It's a 1 to 12 ratio 2 scale ratio of the size.

All the tiles that you see on the tower was the work of the kids from Canyon Crest Academy.

Each one represents an invention introduced during one of the world fairs throughout their history.

male: When I was given the opportunity to receive the Bookworm sculpture, I said, it'd be a great piece to our school.

It really instills education.

Our school's steam magnet school, so art's a big part of it.

When we were going to install this in, we figured we'd place it out here in front of our library because that instilled the reading aspect of it, and it could be enjoyed by not only our students here at the school, but also the community when they've come out to our joint youth field.

So we're very proud to have the Bookworm as one of our signature art pieces here at the school.

Sergey: The sculpture represents a yearning to read, and a yearning for education, a yearning for success.

I'm glad that it's here, it's holding up and that the kids are enjoying it, you're enjoying it and it's an honor for me to come here and say, for you to say these words about this sculpture and about my art thank you.

This sculpture of a giant teddy bear represents Theodore Roosevelt, and this is Theodore Roosevelt Junior High.

The blue collar, the mosaic continents in the city is that light up with LED lighting technology.

They present Theodore Roosevelt's World Peace Prize, the first American president to have received that.

By joining the San Diego Sculptures Guild in 2007, provided me with the opportunity to finally pursue sculpture as my career in life.

This place has provided the foundation for my large scale public works and more imaginative works.

With that foundation that the San Diego Sculptures Guild provided, I've put works throughout the county.

This sculpture is a junior sale memorial, installed here at Roosevelt at 2016.

And it consists of two elements.

The Junior Seau bust it chargers jersey with a number 55 and a seating bench for kids to sit on.

Junior Seau donated a lot of money through Junior Seau Foundation to the arts and culture here in San Diego and in the Southern California region.

So this particular piece is to commemorate those honorable deeds done by Junior Seau, his foundation and his family.

The mosaic work on this sculpture is done by Yuri Karpov, a renowned local mosaic artist.

Besides the projects that are current or in the future here in town, my focus has been merging to Baja California, which is adjacent here at the San Diego.

I've opened up a gallery in another gallery in Puertecitos, Baja, California, it's called Pez Gallery.

Now I'm collaborating with the University of Ensenada, Tijuana and Mexicali on cross promotion programs for sculptural exhibitions, for sculpture classes with the students.

The work down in Baja it's not isolated from the San Diego region.

Mexico has always had a huge impact on the San Diego region and the exchange either economic or artistic, I think would benefit both regions if they are connected.

This cross promotion needs to be on a much deeper level and I'm glad to spearhead kind of that connection as much as I can from my sculptural perspective.

So this is the early stage of development of all these public works.

They started with maquettes models which help the client to better visualize what the final sculpture is going to be.

All of these have been built except for the jellyfish.

It's next destination will most likely be UABC University of Ensenada and Mexico.

Originally, this model was submitted to the Port of San Diego and it was part of the Urban Trees Exhibit in 2011.

So this particular sculpture was on the waterfront here in San Diego for a year before it was relocated down to Mexico.

This was another project that was done for Vista three years ago.

After this one got decommissioned, it was also repurposed and now it's installed in Porto Seguro's Mexico as part of my environmental and artistic campaign.

As you can see, these models look very similar to what the final pieces actually look like.

I took the position of president here at the Guild, which I'm currently holding.

It's been my honor to guide this organization through multiple exhibits throughout the county, through different venues, through art works that we participate in, and to give an opportunity to myself as well as to all the other members here and to the organization as a whole to move forward with sculpture as the foundation for everything.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ male: I think photos need to be printed.

Making a print gives it a validity, you know, you can touch it, you can feel it, you can hold it.

Helping start Transworld in 1983, Transworld Skateboarding Magazine was when I first felt like I might have some talent and they just threw me in, and we were still just coming up with everything.

You know, like how do you shoot street skating when it came along?

You know, we had to like figure out a way to shoot street skating because we were shooting pools and ramps and they took skateboarding out into the streets, you didn't have to have a park anymore.

The world is a skate park and the magazines, you know, we jumped right on that, you know because it was part of new skateboarding, you know.

But it was just a hobby, you know, back in those days there was no job as skate photographer, you know.

I just was shooting my friends and the people that came through the skate ranch and you know, you shoot your friends, that's how everybody starts shooting their friends and I'm sure it's that way with every photographer.

Tony would come to the park and it's like, "Oh, skinny Tony Hawk, he's skating, he's good."

You know, he was just a kid, you know I could get him to do anything.

I have a photo of him with these welding goggles on.

You don't know that 30 years later it's gonna be on Nixon Billboards in Asia.

Nobody cared about skateboarding then.

You know, it was just fun just kind of shooting, you know, willy-nilly not knowing what f stops and shutter speeds were until I changed my art major to photography.

A friend of mine, Sunny Miller did photography and he went with me to the dark room at Palomar and there was that moment where I wanna do more of this you know.

I liked the smell of the dark room, I liked the energy, and I got addicted to it.

I was at Palomar every day when they opened until 5 o'clock and then I was at the skate park working and you know, slept on the pool table for eight months there.

I mean, I was like really living the life.

When things come easy, they don't have as much meaning, you know.

When I started taking photography, I took every class that they had, so I would never have to say no to a job.

I went to Palomar a two year school for 10 years off and on, taking as many units as I could in this one field just changed my whole life.

I was able to discover my style there, you know, and to hang out with other photographers who weren't skate photographers, they were just photographers.

We had little cliquey groups, you know, there's the surf skate guys over here, and then there's the Ansel Adams people over here, and it was really an amazing experience.

Those are still my favorite years when I was learning everything.

male: If they're coming toward me, I can kind of put the light -- male: I think mentors and teachers are like the best thing.

male: So I might put it just here.

female: Okay: male: And I've had a lot of assistance and I always tried to teach them everything I knew 'cause you can't take it with you.

male: As you shoot, you know around 200, you know 250. male: You know, I might go blind tomorrow.

male: It's the fisheye, one is just kind of battered.

It's gotten hit a couple times.

Fifty I shoot product and stuff and then this is my portrait lens, it's an 85 and that's a bitchin' portrait lens.

And this is the 70 to 200.

Next to the fisheye, I probably use this one the most.

male: But basically I don't think skate photography has changed in 30 years.

You know, everything gets a little more technical lighting wise and camera wise, you know, you have instant playback, but it's all pretty much the same.

Some of my favorite photos are natural light, no artificial flash.

You can like the Rodney Mullen silhouette photo, the pole cam photo of Chris Miller, that's all available light.

The first off camera flashes we used just changed, you know, everything.

You know, you could shoot into the sun and for magazine work it really made things pop too.

And I mean we ran some contents pages and I look at them now and I go, "I can't believe I ran that."

'Cause it was so arty and non-skate, you know, it was like my friend stand with the skateboard in front of his face.

A lot of things I can't believe they let us run and we did get into scuffles at the magazine.

Every day I just see this beam of light and I go, "I'd love to shoot a photo with that."

So I got Todd Swank, who was my assistant at the time, he just skated back and forth doing different things and he was doing those wheelies and regular wheelies.

He did like a Superman thing and he did the push.

I mean, just pushing on a skateboard is one of the best things in the world where you just feel free and, you know, it's so simple and basic.

I don't know if I said I wanted it as a cover or if David Carson said it, but he goes, "This will make a great cover with nothing on it."

We took it to, you know, the rest of the people on the magazine and everybody hated it.

And things were said and I left for a couple of days and then when it came out like the skateboard world, half the people hated it and the other half dug it I guess.

And now a lot of people say it was their favorite cover.

The guy that I got in the argument with, now says it's his favorite cover.

And I go, "I remember when it wasn't."

I'm delving more into the feeling of skateboarding, because it's not just always about the peak action you know, and it's like the not a tesco photo of him landing and he's doing an ollie over the stairs.

I never ran the sequence, I only ran the photo of him landing, because I like the way the light was and the sun, and he's kind of silhouetted and he's fully compressed, his hands behind him and it all added to that one photo.

And there's a sequence I shot at Mark Gonzalez doing an ollie over this little gap in Oceanside, and I always ran the ollie shot as a single.

And then I started to notice the photo as he's coming up and his foot is, the side of his foot is compressed against the front of the board.

And now I run that photo and it's not even the peak shot, like it could be a hand gesture or they're letting go of their board early, but it's like just that little thing, you know.

And I've been getting more into detail, you know, and how artifacts now are important in photography.

It has this validity you know, dark room work does.

It's like handmade furniture, or handmade anything you know.

I have this photo of Dave Hack that I shot in Japan and then the dark room tech opened up film into the light.

And back then I was like, "Oh, I screwed up these pictures."

But that makes it cool now because it is the dark room and that it got screwed up, you know, is kind of cool.

I didn't really shoot skateboarding with a medium format because it was kind of hard.

You know, it was easier with 35 millimeter and then I shot three photos with that Mamiya and there's one photo and I told Tony to look at me.

I never even ran it in the magazine and I just dug it out like a couple years ago.

And back then, it wasn't good enough to be in the magazine and now anything that was shot back then, is good and if it happens to be a good skate photo that nobody have seen, it has even that much more meaning to it.

I had to reinvent myself after not working for a magazine for the last couple of years.

I've gone through a garage full of photos trying to find stuff that hasn't been printed, working on a book.

I've been bringing back a lot of stuff from the dead, photos that I just threw them in a bin I'm finding now and I go, "Oh, I can fix this in Photoshop."

Nobody ever saw this photo.

So like on Instagram, I try to run a lot of stuff that hasn't been seen.

I think this should be pretty good coming out of the camera.

So I just look at Photoshop as the dark room.

You manipulate things in the dark room, you know.

I don't do a lot of layers and things like that, but it's kind of cool, you know that you can bring this stuff back from 30 years ago.

I shoot for fun now and you know now that there's no magazines, I always leave it up to the skater what they wanna do.

male: Action shots.

male: You wanna get on the hip?

Watch your knees male: Oh, Jesus.

male: I almost got your chin dude.

male: I need some lemon juice come on.

male: Okay, you wanna look at it?

male: Yeah.

male: Good?

male: Yep.

male: I can't tell in this light if, yeah, it's sharp.

You're smiling.

Yep, we're good?

male: That's really awkward.

male: What?

male: Yeah, that's really awkward.

male: Cool, got it.

male: I do my hobby for a living, so it seems like when people retire, they die.

You know, I don't want to die.

I mean we're all gonna die but why rush it?

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ female: What is your name?

And you can talk about your background, please.

Wayne Gretzky: Yeah.

Hi, I'm Wayne Gretsky and I grew up 10 miles south of Sixth Nation Reserve, Branford Ontario, Canada.

And I always say this to people, "You think football and ice hockey are physical?

The most physical sport I ever played in my life by far was lacrosse.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Oren Lyons: Lacrosse at one time my daddy said it was probably played across most of North America by native people.

Some form, some version of it.

J.P Johnson: A long time ago, our ball games were played in variation by just about everybody in the southeast and the northeast.

Jim Calder: Everywhere they played, it's the creator's game.

There's no evolution here, it's just three types of the game.

These were all distinct forms of the game that were played, different geographical areas in North America.

So there was no evolution, say from this stick to the long stick.

J.P Johnson: The people in the northeast ended up with lacrosse.

Modernized version of something of the ceremonial ball game that we played a long time ago.

The ball and stick game, stick ball.

They say they stopped playing it because it was too bloody.

We were allowed to choke them if they had the ball, strike your opponents with the ball sticks and we lost our man to man game here in Oklahoma for Cherokees in 1911.

It was too violent and it was bringing negative attention to our people that already had negative attention anyway.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Dave White: Some native communities, the native nations, refer to lacrosse as the little brother of war.

People make that association, that lacrosse being a very physical and aggressive sport, was a warrior's preparation for battle.

But the reality is, sometimes intertribal conflicts would arise.

J.P Johnson: Ceremonies and the medicine and preparation for a ball game were the same as they were for going to war.

Dave White: A lacrosse game could be called to resolve it.

Richard Powless: Rather than go to war and kill people, lacrosse was used to settle disputes between families and between nations.

J.P Johnson: When they were going to go play ball, they would say, go to war.

And whenever they were going to war, sometimes they would say go play ball.

Richard Powless: They would just battle it all on the field.

J.P Johnson: It was another way to tame down the loss of life.

Richard Powless: It didn't bring the whole nation into a war.

Richard Mitchell: Our people in the beginning of time when he created this earth, they gave us a weight how to be thankful to what we call the modern earth.

Denise Waterman: It has a religious connection and that connection is that if it's truly, it comes from the words, "It is the creator's game."

Brett Bucktooth: The game of lacrosse was a gift to us from our creator.

For me, lacrosse is a connection to our ancestors who've played this game for centuries and thousands of years.

Dave White: But the idea of having these games, it was to demonstrate to the creator that his gift, the game of lacrosse, was not forgotten.

Gray Sundown: When the game was given to us, it was played so that we, made the creator happy.

Richard Powless: Our games were a big part of our culture to begin with.

J.P Johnson: It was a religious thing and a spiritual thing and also a judiciary thing.

Jim Calder: There's no evolution here.

It's just three types in the game.

In Northeastern US and Canada, this was the type of game that was played in that area.

Great Lakes, this game goes back a long time in North America.

He even played in the winter on the rivers, on the ice.

J.P Johnson: No protective gear whatsoever, tackle full on 100% physical contact.

Jim Calder: Really hard to master this game, but still a form of the creator's game lacrosse.

Neal Powless: Each native community had a name for the game.

In NonaDanga we call the Game [foreign language] which means translation means to bump hips.

Oren Lyons: [foreign language] is the name of the game.

[Foreign language] And I was just amazed the day they took the hip check out of the game, you know.

When they took the name of our game out of the game.

Neal Powless: The Mohawks call it the [foreign language] and that is the stick and ball game.

J.P Johnson: Southeastern people, Cherokee people, Creek people, Choctaw people, we've all changed the game.

Oren Lyons: We know we're playing it before the White man came here.

Neal Powless: When colonization and the Jesuits came and saw the game and gave it the French name of [foreign language] that's really where the implementation of rules and boundaries came in.

Oren Lyons: So it became lacrosse.

It's all right with us, we don't mind.

Dave White: Both teams would make agreements on how the game was to be conducted.

First teams to score three goals.

If the sides were equal, the game could last for days.

If the sides were unequal, it could last 15 minutes.

But no matter what the case, both sides understood and appreciated lacrosse as a gift from the creator.

Neal Powless: And what that gift is is, it's a chance for all of the individuals within our community to share in the joy of their abilities.

So whether it's speed, strength, defense, offense, everyone has a role.

And so when we play lacrosse, we use it for the betterment of the entire team.

Oren Lyons: And it is a sport where the players could perform for the people.

Play hard, that's what they want.

Play as hard as you can.

Neal Powless: So when you're playing lacrosse, you talk about, "Let us all bring our minds together as one under one goal," and you share that enjoyment.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Teiotien Taron: With the game with the times, our minds have also shifted away from the necessity of knowing how to do things like this.

Spin like that.

male: Sturgeon lacrosse ball.

male: Exactly the same weight as the regulation modern lacrosse ball.

Teiotien Taron: Yeah, same weight.

male: Amazing sturgeon ball, look at that.

Ever heard of that before?

male: No.

No.

male: Talk about old school.

male: The healthy jock stick.

Teiotien Taron: How big of a smile I think everybody would get if we showed them this, if we reminded them this is what it is, you know.

♪♪♪ Wayne Gretzky: You know, lacrosse I grew up I watched every Canadian, every North American that played lacrosse in the 60s and 70s and 80s but Gaylord Powless, to me was the greatest lacrosse player I ever saw Play.

He would do things that nobody's ever done and nobody ever will do.

His creativity was so over the top.

He could throw the ball backwards even better than he could throw the ball forwards.

And I remember how exciting it was as a young kid to watch him play.

I was fortunate enough, I saw a lot of great players, but to me there was nobody like Gaylord Powless.

Gaylord Powless: It was also was part of our natural heritage to grab a stick and go.

Like me, I've had a stick in my hands since I could walk.

So then there's a lot of people that haven't had that experience.

Wayne Gretzky: When I was a kid, my dad used to take me every year through the Six Nations Reserve.

They would hand make me a lacrosse stick and my son, who's now 14, I took him out here to get a wooden stick made because now they all use the sort of plastic sticks and he was just in shock and awe how cool the stick was, but they hand make it out of wood and cat gut and it's truly spectacular.

I used to be able to put it like that.

Mark Mitchell: Indian people, they always believe wood is part of everything.

The way the game was given to us by the creator was with a wood stick that's the way it should be played.

It should never be taken out of the game of lacrosse.

Oren Lyons: Plastic took over and now we got Tupperware out there.

But still here, no, we got sticks 'cause we have to play the medicine game.

Dirt McComber: But I really wanna try to get lacrosse sticks going.

You know, even if it's just a couple of them.

You know, you say that I made it.

female: That would be great.

Learn how to make your own lacrosse stick.

Dirt McComber: Not too many people wanna go in and to the end of fence and carry that heavy ass hickory out you know.

♪♪♪ Dirt: Okay, start looking at trees.

male: All these thorns, there is thorns.

Dirt McComber: There's another hickory right there.

There's two over there.

Pull it over your shoulders and just go slow.

male: there's a thorn in my hair.

Dirt McComber: It's gonna get easier by the end and also this is sort of risky to getting injured, right?

male: I thought you were leading.

Dirt McComber: We're one of the only ones around in this wrist that we have five sons and we all play lacrosse, so we want them all to have a little bit more appreciation for a traditional stick.

I wanna just let them know that there's still a place in this world today for the wooden stick in the game.

Not just to be made and hung on the wall, but to be utilized and played.

It will be a whole year before the stick is in hand to be played with.

A whole year.

male: For years probably about seven year run, I was the official stick supplier of the National Lacrosse League.

Money has influenced in the game so much.

You got big companies in like Reebok, Under Armor, you can't compete with them guys you know.

Now today everybody wants to make lacrosse sticks.

Alfie Jacques: There's going to be people who are just making a whole lot of sticks fast.

Which, you know I don't they can do what they wanna do.

male: It's not what a plastic stick where you just tapping them, you know.

You can lay it with the bigger guard, he's gonna stop.

Alfie Jacques: You play till the game is over and you play hard.

You can only play this game with a wooden stick.

You don't play this with plastic.

male: If they can't take it, tell them to go play bingo.

This is a man's game lacrosse.

I'm gonna tell you a secret.

I know how people will take a wood stick and they put it in their hand and they pull it like this and they say, "This stick is not balanced."

Then people are crazy.

That's a crooked stick, when it stays in position.

A balance stick is when you look at it and it's nice and straight.

Alfie Jacques: After then put it in the holder.

Jack Johnson: Okay, Okay.

Alfie Jacques: And just -- Alfie Jacques: Jack was wanting to learn how to make sticks for quite a while.

I told him, "I'll show you everything and it's up to you to learn how to do it."

So had a couple good sessions and he did the work, now he's on his own.

He's doing his own sticks.

Jack Johnson: A lot of it just the love you put in it.

Like I've taken a rasp and I sat in between there and for nights and nights.

Alfie Jacques: This is great.

Jack Johnson: Somebody teaches you something, the first nice one you got that you really, really wanna keep, you have to give it.

And this is the one I made for him as a gift.

You can make a gift like this to impress a guy like this who's been doing it for 50 years.

Mr. Jack goes, "This is really nice."

You know, that hits home right there.

Alfie Jacques: I don't wanna be the last one.

This has to carry on with our people.

Jack Johnson: And I don't wanna be the last stick maker either.

So if some guy comes over, "Hey Jack, I wanna make a stick."

"Well go over there and chop the wood, get it ready for the steamer."

Run him through the whole thing.

You get your nation together, you get all your buddies, put together a team, and you go represent.

male: Anymore questions?

Dave White: As you can imagine, lacrosse was always a form of recreation, a form of physical activity.

When you have the clan situation in the Longhouse, you would have the Wolf's playing against the Bears, you'd have the Bears playing against the Turtles, what you had was a readymade house league, and the clans representing their Longhouse.

Oren Lyons: So when we come to our medicine game, the two houses will be the ones that play Dave White: Kind of a unique feature that our people have with lacrosse, was the medicine game.

Mike Kanentakeron: When they say it's a medicine game it really is.

When a lacrosse game was played for spiritual or cultural reasons, they played as medicine game.

Dave White: The idea was that, they would have a ceremony before the game.

male: They'll get somebody to burn tobacco.

Usually the way they'll do that, they'll give thanks to everything on the earth, right to the creator himself.

Dave White: To help ease their minds and spirits of someone who is ailing or depressed.

male: And to help protect the people while they're playing the game.

Oren Lyons: It's a way, a spiritual way of adding our efforts to a better world.

Tyler Hill: At the same time that we're playing a medicine game down here, they're playing up in the sky world at the same time with us, with wooden sticks.

That's the way we communicate with our creator.

Mike Kanentakeron: So it's not just picking up the stick and playing, it's a deep rooted spiritual aspect to it.

Oren Lyons: There's no winner.

Somewhere we will win, but it doesn't make any difference.

Teiotien Taron: That smile, that's what the medicine is.

That's what we live for, is that good feeling.

Joryan Adams: I say it's still a medicine game, just a new kind of medicine.

Medicine for everyone who needs it.

Oren Lyons: And the ball is the medicine and that's what's given to the person after the game.

[singing in foreign language] From there on, that person belongs to the society.

Jack Johnson: When lacrosse began, it was played only by the men.

It was mostly a medicine game.

They didn't want injuries or any substantial dangers to the women.

Amy Teksiakota: I wasn't able to play growing up, it wasn't permitted for the women to play in our community.

I would always ask questions like, "Why couldn't I have my own stick?"

Whenever my brother would forget his outside in the rain, he would just kind of like, let me use it and we would play catch and just mess around.

But that was the only time I was ever able to have a stick of my own.

I was told that girls couldn't have the wooden sticks because there was a power in the wood and that if a female touches it, they'd be considered powerless and they'd be no more good.

Wewoka Shenandoah: Because it was so rough and the medicine is considered to be so strong, women weren't allowed to play simply for the fact that they are nurturing and they are supposed to be supportive of our next generation, and having children and you know, that title of a motherly role.

Amy Teksiakota: The people that I've met who were so set on the idea that women shouldn't play because their traditional beliefs, that it's only for the men because a woman would get hurt, they didn't incorporate the fact that being able to play is a gift.

Mirabella Lazore: It gives another opportunity for the girls on our reservation to find a sense of purpose and identity, not just as a native woman who's gonna give birth to a native child and that's our old way of thinking for sure.

Dave White: I respect the views of the longhouse, but I think the conditioning and training and the physicality that goes with lacrosse has benefit across the boys and girls, men and women.

I know there's an opportunity for talented players.

I think lacrosse is a very special sport.

You hear different things, clichés like, it's not whether you win or lose, but it's how you play the game, but I think that has specific application to lacrosse because of its roots.

male: It's in our blood, it's in our families, it's part of the pride.

Neal Powless: The spirit itself of the game, playing with a good mind, playing with a good heart, using your abilities for the betterment the team is still there and it's still at the core of the game, and still why when lacrosse players play today, they shake hands after the game and they're friends after the game.

J.P Johnson: It's not exactly the way our ancestors played it.

In order for a culture to survive, sometimes it has to grow and it has to change.

Just like our language or anything else belongs to us, the ceremonial fires they belong to us.

This ball game, if we keep it alive belongs to us too.

Oren Lyons: Wouldn't it be nice, you know, if we could have a game to settle wars like we used to.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Bring strength and pride, Make your moves and stride.

♪ ♪ Play the game of focus as you rep your tribe.

♪ ♪ Play your heart out like everything's on the line.

♪ ♪ Leave it all on the field, let it free your mind.

♪ ♪ Keep your wood a fight to the ending deep inside.

♪ ♪ Nothing better than watching two rival teams collide.

♪ ♪ Go to work at battle stars work to prove who you are.

♪ ♪ Fastest game on two feet and the bros is by far.

♪ ♪ Strong survive and the toughest become stars.

♪ ♪ Play for the medicine because that's who we are.

♪ ♪ Elevating the game we keep raising the bar.

♪ ♪ You can't take this away, this medicine is ours.

♪ ♪ It's time to step it up, when the going gets tough, ♪ ♪ you got to wrap it up.

♪ ♪ When it's time to give up, you owe it to yourself ♪ ♪ to see what you're made of.

♪ ♪ For the blessing, we give thanks to the creator.

♪ ♪ We go home.

♪ ♪ We go pushing it in we're not here to make friends.

♪ ♪ We're here for the win.

♪ ♪ We go home, this is more than the ground ♪ ♪ we're gonna put it all in a line.

♪ ♪ We go Home.

♪ ♪ We go pushing it in we're not here to make friends.

♪ ♪ We're here for the win.

♪ ♪ We go home.

♪ ♪♪♪ male announcer: This program was made possible by funding from Panasonic Lumix, Nelson Photo and Video, Heartland Films, KPBS, and viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪