Iroquois passport

Iroquois passport
The front cover of a contemporary Iroquois biometric passport.
Date first issued	1923
Issued by	Iroquois League
Type of document	Passport
Purpose	Identification
Eligibility requirements	Iroquois League

The Iroquois passport or Haudenosaunee passport is a form of identification and an "expression of sovereignty" used by the nationals of the Iroquois League (Iroquois: Haudenosaunee).

The Iroquois government has issued passports since at least 1923, when Haudenosaunee authorities issued a passport to Cayuga statesman Deskaheh to travel to the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva. The Iroquois passport evolved from negotiations with the U.S. State Department, Canada, Britain and other countries and has been used since 1977.

In 2005 Japan allowed a delegation travelling on the Iroquois passport to visit that country for the World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions.

The Iroquois passport is not accepted for entry into Canada. In early 2010, a delegation from Kahnawake to an environmental conference in Bolivia was unable to return to Canada on the passport, stranding the group in El Salvador for several weeks before they were allowed, under escort, to transit via the United States. On June 18, 2011, another incident occurred at the Cornwall, Ontario port-of-entry into Canada when an Akwesasne Mohawk woman's Haudenosaunee passport was confiscated and a Certificate of Indian Status card had to be used to cross the border. When asked about this incident, a spokesman for the Canada Border Services Agency confirmed that the Iroquois passport is not on Canada's list of acceptable identification.

In July 2010 the United Kingdom did not accept the tribal passports of the Iroquois Nationals field lacrosse team for travel to the UK for the 2010 World Lacrosse Championship. The United States government offered to immediately issue United States passports to the team-members, and several days after this offer was rejected, issued waivers that would allow the team back into the U.S., however the U.K. continued to refuse to issue visas.