The Playbook
The Playbook outlines how PNW Native Lacrosse lives its work in practice. It brings together our Foundational Truth, Sacred Truths, and the interconnected stages of Creator’s Way into one clear, living system. Rather than listing programs or initiatives, the Playbook shows how each part supports the next, creating consistency, belonging, and long-term relationship through Creator’s Game. This is how we move through each season, how we stay accountable to our values, and how we ensure the work remains rooted, intentional, and carried forward in a good way.
CREATOR'S WAY
Creator’s Way is the foundational ecosystem through which PNW Native Lacrosse lives its teachings in practice. It is not a linear pipeline designed to push youth forward, but a circular pathway that invites youth and families into relationship, repetition, and growth at their own pace. Creator’s Way reflects Indigenous understandings of learning and belonging: that growth happens through return, not extraction, and that remembering unfolds over time through embodied experience. Each stage exists to support the next while remaining meaningful on its own, ensuring youth are never rushed, sorted, or left behind. Together, these stages create a living system where the Creator’s Game functions as medicine, ceremony, and community.
FOUR DIRECTIONS LACROSSE
Four Directions Lacrosse is the entry point into Creator’s Way and the first invitation to experience the Creator’s Game as more than sport. Through culturally grounded clinics, youth are introduced to lacrosse skills alongside teachings of balance, identity, and holistic well-being rooted in the Four Directions. This stage establishes belonging, cultural grounding, and curiosity while honoring each youth’s ancestral identity and relationship to the game. Four Directions Lacrosse sets the tone for everything that follows by framing lacrosse as sacred, relational, and connected to spirit, body, mind, and heart from the very beginning.
CREATOR'S COURT
Creator’s Court is the heartbeat of Creator’s Way and the space where remembering is practiced through safe repetition. This consistent, small-sided, community-based environment allows youth to return again and again to play, move, laugh, and belong. Over time, Creator’s Court becomes a modern longhouse: a place where culture, mentorship, leadership, and healing are woven naturally into play. Here, the Creator’s Game functions as medicine, strengthening relationships and grounding youth in who they are through embodied experience rather than instruction.
RECLAIM THE GAME
Reclaim the Game exists to restore Native presence and participation within lacrosse by removing the barriers that have historically excluded Native youth. This stage supports youth and families as they enter local lacrosse systems with confidence, pride, and cultural grounding. Reclaim the Game is not about assimilation into mainstream sport, but about restoring rightful place and visibility. It ensures that Native youth are not asked to leave their identity behind in order to play the game their relatives gifted.
ALL NATIVE
All-Native Travel Teams provide a high-level competitive space rooted in culture, ceremony, and collective care. These teams bring Native youth together across regions to experience excellence without compromise, allowing them to grow as athletes while remaining deeply connected to identity and community. Competition is held in balance with reflection, grounding, and relationship, ensuring that success never comes at the cost of spirit. These teams serve as visible representation of Indigenous excellence and living proof that the Creator’s Game can be played in a good way at every level.
RELATIVES
Relatives is the relational system woven through every stage of Creator’s Way. Grounded in the understanding that growth happens through connection, this mentorship and support network ensures that no youth walks alone. Relatives include mentors, coaches, culture carriers, and community members who walk beside youth and families across programs and seasons. This system restores what colonization disrupted by rebuilding belonging, accountability, and care through lived relationship rather than transactional support.
WALK BESIDE THEM
Walk Beside Them is the umbrella for community-specific, culturally responsive programming that honors the truth that Native communities are not one-size-fits-all. This work meets communities where they are, responding to unique cultural contexts, needs, and teachings while remaining grounded in the organization’s sacred pillars. Programs such as Native Girls Play Lacrosse and ALAX’KAAQ exist within this space, ensuring that identity, gender, geography, and culture are honored rather than generalized. Walk Beside Them reflects humility, listening, and respect for sovereignty in action.
RESPECT THE ROOTS
Respect the Roots is the advocacy and education arm of PNW Native Lacrosse, dedicated to protecting the integrity and origins of the Creator’s Game. This work ensures that the broader lacrosse world understands where the game comes from, why it is sacred, and how it should be honored. Respect the Roots creates cultural accountability while preventing erasure, extraction, and misuse. It safeguards the spirit of the game so that future generations inherit it whole.
