Conestoga College's free lacrosse classes highlight the sport's Haudenosaunee history

Most of us are familiar with the team sport lacrosse — it's played with a net on a long handle, used to toss a rubber ball to score a goal.

But what's perhaps less known about the sport is its rich Haudenosaunee history, particularly in southern Ontario.

People got a chance to learn more about that history during a series of free lacrosse classes offered at Conestoga College's Doon campus.

Danielle Boissoneau, the college's director of Indigenous initiatives, is one of the organizers behind the free classes.

She said the goal is to build bridges in the community.

"We didn't really get that opportunity to create good relationships from the jump and now it's an opportunity to recreate those relationships. Using a sport like lacrosse is one of the ways I think we could do it," she said.

"It really does have a lot to do with education. It really does have a lot to do with how we're learning about each other and recognizing each other's humanity."

Boissoneau helped organize the free lacrosse classes with the help of Kevin Sandy, who said he was called to the sport as a boy when his uncle gifted him his first lacrosse stick.

"My uncle Howard Sky, he used to travel around many years and talk and educate people about who we are as ... people of the Long House," Sandy said.

"He says many years later, you're doing what he was doing and still doing it. People will say the newcomers and Canadians and Americans call it lacrosse, but we don't call it that in my language we call it deyhontsigwa'ehs."

He said his family still makes wooden lacrosse sticks the traditional way.

"There's so many carvers [and] artists who are still doing that. And we're keeping it alive because it's medicine for us, it's still part of our ceremony, it's