Akapamata: Jim Thorpe and the Thompson Brothers

We celebrate the Creator when we excel in sports and care for our communities, which is why I am so deeply honored to serve as an honorary board member on the Thompson Brothers’  4 The Future Foundation.

I know the spiritual wealth we invest in our communities and our future generations can overcome any lack of material wealth because I lived it and saw it throughout Indian Country in my work at the US Interior Department, and now in my work as an executive director of an upcoming feature film about Jim Thorpe, the world renowned Sac and Fox/Potawatomi athlete.

Non-Indians may have taken our land, but with our strong resilience they were not able to take our culture, language, religions and they cannot steal our spirit, because it is the Creator’s gift to us.

Like when the other Olympians were lining up for the final event of the pentathlon, the 1,500-meter run, and Jim Thorpe discovered that someone, probably an athlete afraid of losing to him, had stolen his shoes from his gym bag. 

He had five minutes to find shoes or be disqualified. 

He dug one shoe from a wastebasket. It was too small, but he jammed his left foot into it and ran out of the locker room. On the field, he overturned a burn barrel and a shoe fell out. It was too big for his right foot, so he slipped on a spare sock from his gym bag and sprinted to the starting line just in time for the race.

Thorpe went on to set a record for the decathlon in the 1912 Olympics that held for 20 years.

Why were the privileged gentleman athletes with their elite training regimens no match for an American Indian who did not even know he could take a running start for the javelin throw event?

Maybe it was because they had never caught a wild horse on foot like Jim had been doing since the age of 10.

Like Thorpe, the Thompson brothers have distinguished themselves in athletics with breathtaking creativity, strength, and skill. 

And as with Thorpe, their athletic prowess on the lacrosse field was rooted in a humble training regimen that made the best of their rural surroundings on the Onondaga Reservation in upstate New York. Running up steep concrete waterworks. Cradling and dodging through the woods. Shooting on a wooden goal with a circle cut out that only a perfectly aimed lacrosse ball could pass through.

The Thompson family exemplifies the way the Iroquois people have received the Creator’s gift of the game of lacrosse and honored that gift with excellence on the field of play.

But like Thorpe, the Thompsons are going even further, using the prominence from their athletic accomplishments to give back to the community.

When Thorpe was working as an extra for Hollywood movie studios during the Great Depression, he recruited many American Indians to play Indians in Westerns, good jobs that the studios had been giving to non-Indians. But he did more. He created a community for them. He established the Los Angeles Indian Center. And when they did not have enough food, he grabbed his gun and hunted for game in the Hollywood Hills.

The community called Thorpe their “Akapamata,” the Sac and Fox term for caregivers, because he did what he could to care for them.

Like Thorpe, the Thompsons are transcending the athletic roots of their fame to serve as Akapamata. Through the 4 The Future Foundation, they will help student-athletes pursue their dreams while encouraging them to build their personal, physical, mental, traditional, and cultural strength. They will be creating programs and opportunities for indigenous and under-served-community athletes to experience lacrosse in the true spirit of the game.  

Through the foundation, we will share with native people and so many others the true game of lacrosse and the spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood to keep our communities strong and working together no matter the challenges. Not for the sake of winning but for the goodness of our health and wellbeing on and off the field.

We are building  4 The Future Foundation with the acknowledgment, honor, and respect of the generations that came before us and to help us give forward to our future generations.  

The honor of it all is to that we do this for the Creator and to those whose shoulders we stand on!

Iwgwien (thank you),

Nedra Darling
Prairie Band Potawatomi citizen/Cherokee
Executive Producer, Bright Path 
Co-Founder, Bright Path Strong

The Boys Are Giving Back!

In the true spirit of Gajihgwae (lacrosse) the Thompson brothers have created 4 The Future Foundation to support the youth with equipment, training, respect and good will across Haudenosaunee territory and across the world.

The Thompson boys are a product of the Iroquois Nationals Program. Their dad, Jerome Sr. was a hard-nosed Midi and face-off man for the Nationals for years. Their mom, Delores, never missed a game or practice, always picking up after us. The game is in our blood and the boys are proof of that. We are proud of them and their accomplishments.

I look forward to and support their efforts to expand nationally and internationally, the principles of clean living, healthy bodies, healthy minds and the camaraderie of the spirit of our game of lacrosse.

Oren Lyons
Faithkeeper, Onondaga Nation
Founder and Board Member, Iroquois Nationals
Lacrosse Hall of Fame