March tournaments shooting for more teams

Harvey Kakegamic of Sandy Lake helped resurrect the Northern Bands Hockey Tournament, held in Dryden during March break.
Kakegamic, a Sandy Lake band councillor, served on the tournament’s organizing committee, just as he did for the first Northern Bands played more than 30 years ago. He skated in that first tournament too, alongside Max Kakepetum and other Sandy Lake Chiefs teammates.
Co-ordinated by Kakepetum, the Northern Bands enjoyed its heyday in Sioux Lookout during the 1980s and ’90s before moving to Thunder Bay for a few years, then shutting down.
The Northern First Nations Hockey Tournament filled the void in Sioux Lookout, as the town remained the top March break tournament destination for northern teams.
But Harvey and Robert Kakegamic, deputy chief in Sandy Lake, decided it was time to bring the Northern Bands back – this time in Dryden and in direct competition with the 13th annual Northern First Nations tournament.
The Sioux Lookout tournament typically fields 32 First Nation teams from the district but this month that number dropped almost in half, to 17, as the Northern Bands attracted 23 teams to Dryden. Each tournament was played over six days, five of them overlapping.
“I questioned why the same dates,” said Sam Mamakwa, who along with Jack Mckay makes up the Northern First Nations organizing committee that works with co-ordinator Margaret Kenequanash. “I still don’t understand it.”
Harvey Kakegamic provided an explanation after tournament week. The past few years other First Nations approached Sandy Lake – whose current edition of the Chiefs team is considered one of the best First Nation clubs in the district – with concerns that band membership transfers “just for the Sioux Lookout tournament” and “league players from down south” gave other teams an unfair advantage. This also displaced some reserve-based players from team rosters, Kakegamic said.
In the comments section of the Northern First Nations’ own tournament website, teams targeted for such criticism, most of it anonymous, include the current champion Lac Seul Eagles, B-side champion Hudson Bay Cree (representing Fort Severn), and the Michikan Mavericks (Bearskin Lake), runners-up in 2012.
Eligibility rules for the Northern First Nations tournament require that a player be a status Indian, represent their First Nation and carry a status card for proof of membership.
The Northern Bands imposes the added requirement that “players must have permanent residency” in the community they play for, with permanent residency defined as “since birth, having been living in and brought up as a child in their respective community.” The rules did allow players who are living outside their home community for school or work.
“We cannot compete with the (players from) southern teams, which are very organized and high calibre,” Kakegamic said. “There are all kinds of tournaments down south that the better teams can enter. I don’t think us, remote communities, would be able to win any games at all at tournaments down south, like in the Brandon area or the Thunder Bay area. We’re not that high calibre yet.”
Jordan Kakegamic, 21, is one of the players who switched to the Northern Bands this year, as a forward with the tournament’s B-side champion Keewaywin Hawks.
“They’re both good tournament but we like this one,” he said after Keewaywin’s final game. “Most of the teams have been complaining about the Sioux tournament, about import players and stuff like that, so this tournament is a little more fair for everybody.”
Northern First Nations co-ordinator Kenequanash offers a different viewpoint.
“Just because you live on a reserve doesn’t mean you have less of a chance to become a professional hockey player,” she said. “You can do so by being competitive and by practising. I think there are those opportunities that are there and that our communities can continue to work to improve. I don’t like the messaging that just because you live on reserve, you don’t have that opportunity.”
Some who commented on the Northern First Nations website share her view and cite the Bushtown Jets from Eabametoong, champions in 2009 and finalists this year, as proof reserve-based teams can succeed in Sioux Lookout. “I think any community can be just as good; you just have to have players that love the game so much you will find them at the rink any time, 24/7.
That’s how the Jets are,” one person wrote.
And while talking about Lac Seul’s defeat of Bushtown and third straight Northern First its Nations championship, Eagles forward Clinton Kejick suggested teams like the Jets hold one distinct advantage over his. “Everybody up north plays with each other all year round and we come here and this is the only time we play as a team,” he said. “Other than that, we’re scattered everywhere else playing.”
Ron Nate, 48, coach of the Eabametoong Outlaws team that also competed in Sioux Lookout, believes his team of mostly teenagers will one day be a championship contender as well.
“That’s one of our goals,” he said. “That’s the most exciting part of it: anticipating when you’re going to go on to the ‘Big Show,’ ” as he and others refer to the Sioux Lookout tournament final.
Next year
Organizers of both tournaments indicate they want to attract more teams next year.
“I’d like to see a full-fledged hockey tournament … a bigger tournament than this year for sure,” Kenequanash said of the Northern First Nations event.
“I think we’re gonna have to re-evaluate where we’re going with this. If the communities decide they want to go with a Northern Bands tournament, which we’ve seen half of the teams decide this year, then we need to look at ‘How are we going to restructure the tournament?’ ”
She thinks that question would best be answered in consultation with teams and fans, perhaps
through a survey or the tournament website.
“We need to continue having a tournament in Sioux Lookout,” she added. “We’ve already scheduled our ice time for next year.
“I think we also have an opportunity to work with Lac Seul First Nation, with the new arena that they built.”
Kakepetum said the ideal number of teams for the Northern Bands tournament on the twin ice surfaces in Dryden would be 28.
He’d also like to see additions to the tournament’s organizing committee, with representatives from more communities.
Organizer Kakegamic foresees at least one rule change for next year’s Northern Bands: disallowing players from participating in both tournaments the same week, as several did this March.
A half dozen of the Eabametoong Outlaws, for example, also played for the Eabamet Lake Bomb in Dryden.
One of them was goaltender Mathew Shawinimash, 38, who has three hockey-playing kids. He suggested another change: “They should have the Little Bands, the youth tournament, during March break because the students are missing out on school,” due to that tournament’s week-long schedule in February, “whereas the adults can take time off work” for alternate dates.