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[Asherdan]

[side_show]

Oh god...  You're kidding right?  Please tell me this isn't seriously something you're having children perform.

[jay-ell]

I got nothin' at the moment, but Danger Boy and Pedro are doing Indian Guides for the first time this year (well, first time for Danger -- Pedro was a Little Brave once, too) and I am going to show him this thread.

What's your Indian name, Ash? My guys are Red Lightning and Handsome Devil.

[wombat]

ANY BETTER IDEAS?

HMMMM?

I suspect that Smells' better idea would involve not pretending to be Indians.

[pmcd9]

I'm Joining a Religious Cult

[KeithHernandez]

I said this in a super dickbag way like 6 times, but lets try this- the fact you instill racism into your children and then won't allow them (or me- at least legally) to deprogram themselves through psychedelics is the reason our country will never be what you think it once was.  Seriously man, you can do it.  Pull yer kids from this casual racism/herd mentality forming bullshit or face the consequences.

Except for its not even that good- you get to be a dead asshole while they and I deal with the consequences. 

[side_show]

What's your Indian name, Ash? My guys are Red Lightning and Handsome Devil.

I... I think I'm going to throw up.

I suspect that Smells' better idea would involve not pretending to be Indians.

This.

[Choop]

boy scouts are homophobic, indian guides are racist, any other national organization for outdoorsmanship has some kind of ridiculous -ism attached. here's a thought, skip the organized part. instill free thinking with knot knowledge and boat creation. ditch achievement tokens for actual achievement, and tie in pseudo-related education on self-belief and practicality and frugality and whatever else fits the bill.

or you know work inside the national organizations to combat the isms they spread, that might be another solution. that feels better than turds between my fingers, i'll tell you that much right now, and as a bonus it works better than asking imaginary friends to do it for me

[greenkoolayd]

being a successful part of a group doesnt have to be at the expense of ones individuality.

[wombat]

Sure, but more to the point here, is it too much to ask that being successful in a group not involve stereotyping and prejudice?

My nephew is in Boy Scouts. His parents are divorced and my sister has almost no money and with the Scouts he gets to do a lot of stuff he wouldn't get to do otherwise. From what I see, what he gets out of the group really is different than what she could do with him alone, given her skills and resources. Not that she doesn't do plenty of enrichment stuff with him on her own, but it does seem to be valuable and different.

But man, is it hard when he asks me to contribute to the fundraising stuff. I feel just bad ignoring the email, I feel bad saying nothing about the issue and why I'm not contributing and not standing up for the principle... it's a rock and a hard place.

It's easy to deny the value of these organizations if you don't like their politics - if it's not your kids, it's easy to advocate throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But I am actually pretty flabbergasted that there is a still an organization where well-meaning people let their kids pretend to be Indians.

[Ben-San]

It's easy to deny the value of these organizations if you don't like their politics - if it's not your kids, it's easy to advocate throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But I am actually pretty flabbergasted that there is a still an organization where well-meaning people let their kids pretend to be Indians.

No, see, they're honoring the brave and noblarrrgh I can't even type this shit. I actually hadn't heard of the Indian Guides, apparently they're YMCA-affiliated? The Scouts had some pretty major native appropriation stuff going on too when I was a kid (even in super-lefty Massachusetts), but I don't know if they've managed to get it out of their system yet. Nothing quite as overt as this, though.

It's possible to talk to the organizations about why this is a terrible idea, but you'll probably have to brace for being shat at for getting "political correctness" all over a white guy's fond childhood memories of playing Injun.

[Ben-San]

Man, playing Indian? That aint what this is, but ok.

Did any of you check out the YMCA move over the last several years to force a transtition of this program to Y-Guides, with no Indian component?

Sorry to trample on folk, I guess not. Dickbags without kids, all acting like they know about spitting out a decent human.

I'm afraid I didn't, I was just going by your opening post where you refer to them as "Lone Indian" and "Tribal Braves". Which, I mean, it kind of makes people assume that component is still there. I mean, you didn't say "Y-Guides", you said "Indian Guides" and you're talking about your "Indian names" and all that.

[Ben-San]

Which, at the urging of parent organization, is being phased out on a mass scale since 2001.

Let us submit to impressions, not reality!

I took out the dickbags comment because you guys do not deserve it yet.

That's good news, then! Maybe we should discuss youth organization skits without calling the kids "little braves" and "lone Indians" and give them "code names' or something instead of "Indian names".

I'm genuinely glad to hear that a youth organization is phasing out the offensive stuff it was doing. The reason people were going on "impressions, not reality" is because those impressions were being reinforced by every post in the thread and the "reality" would only have been available information via independent research. The impression this gives, in turn, is that the "reality" is that the organization no longer uses the offensive stuff in official documents but it continues in practice, which wouldn't be good news - but because, as I said, I don't know much about the Y-Guides, I couldn't say whether that's the case or not. Certainly I would guess that responding to "maybe you shouldn't do the indian-play thing" with "wish in one hand and shit in the other" is maybe not the best way to dispel that impression.

Edit: I don't mean this to come off as "I will teach you to post better" and I'm definitely not trying to speak for sideshow or anyone else here. It's just, if you're pissed at the impression people got, that's the impression you gave. If you'd said straight out "we're phasing out those terms, sorry about that" or something it probably would've gone over a lot better, but from the way people who were talking from the "side" of the Y-Guides were going on it came as a genuine surprise to me that the terms were being phased out.

[wombat]

Which, at the urging of parent organization, is being phased out on a mass scale since 2001.

I'm curious how can it take that long to stop having kids call themselves by Indian names?

[jay-ell]

Yeah, technically we are both being incorrect because the organization is now called "Y Gudes" and they are very emphatic about that. It was Indian Guides when Pedro was a youngling and the name has stuck out of sheer habit. My boys' tribe name is the Screaming Ninjas, if that gives you any indication of how convoluted this whole thing is.

They do still use some "TV Indian" terminology (tribe, braves, etc) but they don't wear headbands/headdresses any more and they have made a serious effort to be more sensitive to native cultures. For my part, I guess because I feel like I know the difference between a TV Indian and an actual First Nations tribesman, this fictional culture is so amalgamated and so far removed from reality that there's just no connection to the real people for me. It's no different (says the white lady) from kids getting together and pretending to be Jedis. (Which, actually, would be a pretty amazingly cool alternative to Y Guides/Boy Scouts, if such a thing existed. Somebody get on that.)
 
I mean, if there were a group of six year olds running around pretending to be Confederate soldiers and learning about teamwork, strategy, and U.S. history through the lens of the Civil War, well. That would probably piss off a lot of people, but I would be kind of fine with it. Depending, of course, on the group's broader politics -- whether they discriminated against people of color, for instance, or put Black kids in separate "regiments" under the guise of historical accuracy. Nobody's going to accuse the Y Guides of sticking too closely to the historical reality, here. And in this case, where your roots are in something that truly did appropriate imagery from an existing culture, straying as far as possible from historical reality is a good thing.

Of course kids don't know the difference between a TV Indian and a real Lumbee (our nearest local tribe, sort of...it's complicated and controversial, actually). But honestly, my kids have never seen a TV Indian at all. That's just not a part of our culture any more, that media image. However, they do have friends and classmates of Lumbee descent, and in this area we have an extremely high level of integration (the Lumbee do not have a reservation) and there is very little prejudice against native people. (None that I have seen, but again I am white so what do I know). I know it's different in areas where there is less assimilation, and I know there is still a lot of prejudice against First Nations peoples in the West. But for better or for worse, we've decided that the gentle fiction of an outmoded stereotype is a small price to pay for giving my son an opportunity to be part of a community of other boys and their dads.

Because honestly, there are no better options except to do nothing. And my kid's social opportunities are limited enough as it is.

I'm curious how can it take that long to stop having kids call themselves by Indian names?

I think, officially, they're "Tribe names." Ash and I are using unsanctioned, outdated terminology again.