OA’s pretendian core ceremonies celebrate racist oppression, mock tribes, must be blown up

The Order of the Arrow’s core ceremonies–the call outs and inductions–are pretendian parodies of American Indians and their culture.

The USA has a racist legacy of destroying American Indian tribes with forced Westernization. While that failed, OA’s core ceremonies celebrate the racist legacy’s goal: a dystopia with fully debased tribes, with nobody to own tribal customs.

If we want a useful OA, it must stop mocking American Indians, and it must stop celebrating our country’s cruel, racist sins.

A crucial step is eliminating all American Indian theming in the core ceremonies, just as national youth OA leadership asked.

(Technical note: This article is not about OA’s American Indian Activities (AIA), which are nominally authentic. Unlike the core ceremonies, AIA may have a path forward when it is done in collaboration with tribes.)

The core ceremonies are fake

In OA’s pretendian parodies, Scouts act out fake stories that were created by Westerners, done while employing a mishmash of language, themes, names, and clothing appropriated from American Indian tribes. Even worse, the ceremonies are often delivered with gross Western stereotypes of Indians: garbled with Tonto-talk pidgin, the phony stories are rich with noble-savage tropes.

Example Tonto-talk pidgin, spoken by the Tonto character. It stars at 0:53. Normal in Order of the Arrow ceremonies, Tonto talk is a stilted parody of American Indian speech.
OA’s legend is inauthentic, comes from Western sources (source of image).

The ceremonies celebrate the end game of racist oppression

Some defend OA’s pretendian parodies as “respect” or “honor”. In fact, these ceremonies validate our country’s horrible sins.

Our country has a legacy of racist oppression of American Indians. This includes Indian removal, boarding schools, and much, much more. Among the goals of this oppression was to “White”-wash all American Indians: Through forced Westernization, the USA tried to destroy tribes. Had this succeeded, an outcome would have been divorcing tribal customs from any sense of ownership.

If you can’t change them, absorb them until they simply disappear into the mainstream culture…. In Washington’s infinite wisdom, it was decided that tribes should no longer be tribes, never mind that they had been tribes for thousands of years.

Republican Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (source, emphasis added)

OA’s founding was in 1915. Then, the USA was still deep in its racist suppression of tribes. For example, re-education camps Indian boarding schools were still active. Oppressive official acts would continue decades longer, such as the Indian termination policy, which started in the 1940s, and the Indian Relocation Act of 1956.

In the time of OA’s founding, there was likely little moral qualm about treating tribal customs as if they are obsolete, public-domain artifacts.

A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one…

In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.

Richard H. Pratt, founder and superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School (source, emphasis added)

Thankfully, our country’s racist oppression failed. Tribes are now strengthening their communities, cultures, and identities through tribal self-determination, which started before the mid-20th century and become federal policy in the 1970s.

The ceremonies perpetuate racism

An OA interested in respect and honor would seek authenticity and support tribal self-determination. Instead, with its mocking and appropriation continuing even now, OA acts as if our country’s repudiated, racist agenda actually worked.

“Respect” and “honor” is the opposite of perpetuating a repudiated, racist past. It is the opposite of corrupting young minds, presenting pretendian parodies as if they were authentic.

If respect and honor were OA’s priorities, it would:

  • Support tribal ownership of their own customs.
  • Only share truth about American Indians and tribes.
  • Not mock tribes.

An Order of the Arrow that respects and honors American Indians has no pretendian parodies!

It’s still going on

Racist or tribe-mocking practices remain normative in OA. In the context of pretendian parodies that are portrayed as authentic:

  • They use brownface cosplay. In fact, their placement as the first suggestion in Approved Attire for Order of the Arrow Ceremonies shows that OA still encourages costumes that parody American Indians. By only constraining limitations with “should” statements, OA winks at those who wish to cling to appropriation.
  • Ceremonialists play fictitious American Indian characters invented by Westerners, such as Allowat Sakima (Chief of the Fire) or Meteu (Medicine Man).
  • The ceremonies mention fake characters as if they are historical, such as Chingachgook.
  • A phony legend about a real tribe continues to be read. Adapted from the 1826 romance novel Last of the Mohicans, the legend is a fiction written about the Mohicans that OA assigned to the Lenape, a different tribe!
  • They falsely convey that historical characters from different tribes, such as Uncas, who was Mohegan, are part of Lenape history.
  • The ceremonies continue to use words appropriated from the Lenape tribe.
  • The characters speak mostly noble-savage tropes garbled with Tonto-talk pidgin.
A pretendian parody from a June 2023 Order of the Arrow event.
A pretendian parody form a July 2023 Order of the Arrow event. Even though they didn’t use the preferred costuming option on OA’s approved-attire list (order means things in lists!), the noble-savage tropes and Tonto talk pidgin keep this in American Indian-parody land.

Further reinforcing its desire to cling to racist practices, OA will train for and host performances of its predendian parodies at its 2024 national conference at University of Colorado Boulder. Many sessions that perpetuate core ceremonies are in the conference program guide:

  • Brotherhood Ceremony Evaluations (p. 40)
  • Brotherhood: The Legend Continues (p. 40)
  • Evaluating Ceremonies (p. 41)
  • Exemplar Brotherhood Ceremony Viewing Session (p. 41)
  • Exemplar pre-Ordeal Ceremony Viewing Session (p. 42)
  • Exemplar Program (p. 42)
  • Individual and Team Coaching (p. 43)
  • Inductions Advising (p. 43)
  • Inside the Ordeal Ceremony (p. 45)
  • Inside the pre-Ordeal Ceremony (p. 45)
  • Introduction to Ceremonial Skills Workshop (p. 45)
  • Pre-Ordeal Ceremony Evaluations (p. 46)
  • The Ceremonial Multiverse (p. 49)
  • The Vigil Honor Experience: Beyond the Triangle (p. 50)
  • Vigil Honor Ceremony Evaluations (p. 51)

What if we flipped the tables?

Let’s suppose that BSA was destroyed. Further suppose that soccer clubs, to given a sense of woo to their elite players, set up a secret society. The induction ceremony has performers dress up in tan shirts and campaign hats, wear our Eagle Scout and Arrow of Light symbols, and do a parody of a court of honor.

Would any sane person allege that honors BSA? Of course not. In the same sense, OA’s parodies of American Indians is neither honor nor respect.

Core ceremonies are irredeemable

Since I was a youth, OA swam in local allegations of American Indian endorsement of core ceremonies. I still hear it today. They typically invoke some random oral blessing from a mysterious American Indian from years prior.

These alleged endorsements cannot be differentiated from the “my Canadian girlfriend” trope. Why? Because they are probably phony. (I would be happy for someone to provide a link to a lodge website where it hosts a copy of an endorsement from a local tribe for its core ceremonies. Leave a comment if you know of one!)

Well, shouldn’t we try to get tribal endorsement of our core ceremonies? That would be inappropriate!

These ceremonies are amalgams of Western stereotypes and Western fictions, employing stories, characters, outfits, and traditions of multiple tribes.

As such, an endorsement would have to come from some group that represents over 2,000 tribes. Given the diversity of American Indians thought, practice, and belief, merely believing such an organization could exist would suggest foundational ignorance of American Indians.

OK, let’s suppose we inventoried every last part of our ceremonies and identify the tribe we stole each part from. The clothing, the language, the themes, etc. That is a herculean task that I doubt is feasible. But what if some amazing soul did it? We would have to approach each tribe and ask for their endorsement of their share of our Western parody that was built on theft. Simply asking that of a tribe is an insult!

Out of respect for the American Indian people and tribes, we must acknowledge racist parodies for what they are: irredeemable celebrations of tribal debasement.

It must stop

Racist and inauthentic, OA’s core ceremonies have no path to redemption. They have to stop.

Recent OA national youth leaders “wholeheartedly support ending the use of American Indian iconography and activities in our programs”.

Can they be reimagined? GIED to the rescue!

A major feature of the Order of the Arrow’s Ordeal experience is the elangomat system. The elangomat is a helpful guide to Scouts who are going through the Ordeal, a joining rite of Order of the Arrow.

I mention this to introduce Bill Hartman, who invented the elangomat system. Bill has a rich history with the Order of the Arrow, and his service continues: Bill leads the Guild of Inductions Experience Designers (GIED), a passion project where he and a team are reimagining Order of the Arrow’s core ceremonies. Among GIED’s goals are to remove cultural appropriation from the ceremonies.

GIED honors OA’s founder, E. Urner Goodman

In addition to disassociating OA from our country’s legacy racism, eliminating cultural appropriation honors a later-life admission of E. Urner Goodman, OA’s founder.

In 1970s living-room conversations with Urner, Bill Hartman recounts him lamenting his “biggest mistake” in founding the Order: utilizing fake legends in the context of naïve Scouts who mistakenly believe they are real history. (To be clear, Urner was only commenting on the factual legitimacy of the stories. Bill does not recall Urner otherwise commenting on the ceremonies’ ethics.)

In addition to providing OA a respectful exit from racism, the GIED’s work addresses E. Urner Goodman’s regret.

The National Order of the Arrow Committee could care less

I have documented several examples of cultural rot of BSA’s national organization. Prominent in the rot are arrogance, a bureaucratic culture of inertia and ineffectiveness, and hostility to outside views. OA’s national committee appears to be no different. In addition to its poor transparency, it’s hostile to outside views.

In a rational world, a long-tenured member who invented a crucial part of inductions would be a valued contributor. His group’s passion project would be given weight. That is the case for the GIED.

The National Order of the Arrow Committee is in a different world. When the GIED’s work was shared with a portion of this committee, a committee member write this to all committee members:

From: [redacted]
Subject: Recent Ceremony proposal
Date: September 3, 2023 at 12:46:34 PM CDT
To: [redacted]
Cc: [redacted]

All,

It has come to my attention that many of you probably received an email from [a person who shared GIED works] with … PROPOSED CHANGES TO the OA CEREMONIES.  Let me be clear that this is NOT the current direction of our committee.  We have our own team led by [selected committee members] who are looking at any changes that may be necessary to our Induction process and ceremonies.  This has been a very detailed and methodical evaluation occurring over the past 2 years.  I have forwarded [the GIED works] to [selected committee members] for them to look at, but that is it.  [The sharer’s] proposals by no means reflect the direction of the OA at this time.

The OA leadership remains in close working relationships with the BSA leadership and the BSA Mission and Reputation group regarding our plans moving forward and we will continue to keep the OA National Committee updated and they will vote on changes when appropriate.

Thanks,

[redacted]

Living up to the cultural rot of the national organization, the committee is actively moating itself off from mere peasants. Of course, everything good that BSA has ever done has been invented from within by a gold looper, right? Of course that’s true. Peasants must know their place, which is to shut up and receive wisdom from wise elites who know better.

Additionally, this reveals that a team has spent two years secretly pondering the ceremonies. That is far too much time, so this committee is obviously engaged in bureaucratic stalling tactics to delay reform further.

Wait, there’s more! The ceremony revisions were finally published in December 2023. Sadly, all the problems with the Ordeal ceremony I identified above are from this revision. (The passwords on the ceremony docs are ahoalton, itisonlyright, and leadershipinservice. Secrets in Scouting are bad, you know?) If this is the result of over two years of work, it’s clear evidence that OA is unserious about fixing its cultural-appropriation issues.

GIED’s works should be considered. There may also be other proposals worthy of consideration. Whatever it does, OA must pivot from the national organization’s norms: Instead of acting elitist, it must stop moating itself off from the base.

Limited patience warranted

A key reason individuals become pretendians, like Elizabeth Warren, Iron Eyes Cody, and Johnny Depp, is “[p]ersonal gain and material advantage” (source, p. 15). OA’s pretendian parodies have given it gain and advantage: a shortcut to creating a uniting theme. This uniting theme substitutes for OA’s raison d’etre. Without the woo from the ceremonies, OA is just a collection of weakly related activities.

OA is facing an existential crisis. Discerning a raison d’etre is hard. Patience is needed while OA improves.

The patience must be limited. OA’s national leadership has only given us decades of stalling. Continued stalling isn’t the answer, but bureaucratic stalling tactics are the national organization’s preferred answer to nearly anything it faces.

Transparent improvement must start now. We need a clear-eyed, open acknowledgement of the inappropriateness of OA’s pretendian parodies. We also need a firm, time-boxed goal for OA to clean up its act.

So far, OA’s leadership has not differentiated itself from national’s cultural rot. For example, in the nine months between a major survey and the AIA announcement, it stonewalled the public, and it still has not shared the survey results.

Again, patience is limited. Should the culture of BSA’s national organization–stalling, hostility to outsiders, intransparency, low performance, and resistance to accountability–continue to be OA’s methods, that signals a lack of seriousness. A lack of seriousness will only lead to OA’s dissolution.

Appendix: Thanking hobbyists

I want to make a brief mention of the Indian hobbyist movement. The USA’s racist attempts to “White”-wash American Indians and destroy tribes succeeded to a degree, quashing some tribes, leaving nobody to carry on their customs.

In some cases, Whites took up the traditions and, to the best of their ability, kept them alive. That was the Indian hobbyist movement.

There was a time and place for the Indian hobbyist movement. Those who kept traditions alive deserve thanks. But that was a century ago. Tribes are strengthening, in some cases re-forming, and reasserting themselves through tribal self-determination.

Today, it is most sound when non-American Indians limit their American Indian performance art to that which is directly sanctioned through the tribe that owns the art. For BSA’s institutional purposes, that sanctioning needs to be explicit and transparent.

All that said, there is no ethical argument for perpetuation of pretendian parodies within an organization that claims to build character.


Comments

2 responses to “OA’s pretendian core ceremonies celebrate racist oppression, mock tribes, must be blown up”

  1. Dear Aren – Just surfin and I ran across your comments on Scouting Maverick about the OA’s Pretendian core ceremonies.

    At some point back in about 2017/18 I subscribed to one of the 3 or 4 sites on faceBook having to do with Boy Scouting. At that time, I think it was mostly on Scoutmasters not afraid of controversy (?) hosted by Paul Shnoes. One of the main contenders on that site was Dave McGrath. At first, I agreed with a lot of his commentary. I am an Arrowman and some of his recommendations were offensive to me, but most of it made good sense. But as time went by, it became apparent to me that he would advocate for the dissolution of the entire Boy Scout movement. Of course, I was not about to agree with that. I had my problems with the way those super humans in their ivory tower down in Texas were handling things. I had a real problem with how they approached the problem with a Cub Scout not wanting to say the Cub Scout Promise(?) That was a no brainer to me. Then they really dropped the ball when it came to allowing gays to be Scoutmasters or Assistants. This all culminated in allowing females to register in the Boy Scout movement, in a separate but equal situation. Then you came along and at first, I agreed with most of what you are advocating. It’s not that I have come to disagree with you, because you are now discussing matters much above my pay grade. I still don’t agree with the leaders (now CEOs) and I guess I will never (It irks me to know that their salaries are 6-figures, and then I see what they are doing to earn it!) agree with them on many of their decisions.

    As for the OA, after my first stint as Scoutmaster, I became interested (outside of the B.S.A.) in the Pottawattomie who are indigenous to our area on the south end of Lake Michigan. I read several books about native American culture and I guess I was old enough and understood our history enough to realize that we (white Americans) had treated the native Americans very badly (I mean very badly), and although the books I had read were all written by white authors, one aspect of several of those books was the description of tribal governance. I was impressed by how the tribes governed their own and had operated this way several centuries before the appearance of white men on their shores. They (especially the Pottawattomie) implemented a type of governing in which all major decisions were settled by consensus as opposed to majority rule. The various factions within the tribe were represented by “speakers” and no decisions were made until all the speakers were heard and satisfied with the outcome of the process. I guess I was amused when the white leaders at the time, wanting to make a treaty with the Pottawattomie for some land, “appointed” Chief To-Pe-Ne-Bee (of the Pottawattomie) as tribal leader and negotiated that treaty with him, after plying him with enough liquor to make him receptive. (Our council camp was Camp To-Pe-Ne-Bee). As time went on, I became our District’s historian. There was no council historian, but I was only interested in researching the history of our District (Potawatomi District) because our council (Pottawattomie Council) had been merged with two other larger councils in 1972 To form the Northern Indiana Council and then later, the LaSalle Council. All the records of our Pottawattomie Council had been destroyed except for the individual Scout records, so anything I came up with was news to me (and a lot of older Scouters who have read my writing.) I have documented almost all of which I hope to find about our council history, and I have begun to compile the history of our used-to-be council camp, Camp To-Pe-Ne- Bee. I have a very good topo map of the area and a few of the trails and roads inside the camp located. One of the trails, the Blackhawk Trail interested me to assign names to the rest of the trails. When I sought the help of members on the properties committee, I was ignored because there was more important decisions to be made, so, , ,

    In an effort to establish indian names or terms to those trails and roads, I started asking around to identify someone in the Pottawattomie community with which to converse and employ to help me do the right thing. I first discovered (on faceBook) the name of a college professor down at Ilinois University in Champaign, Illinois with whom I conversed for several months. He advised me to contact another professor and author from the same university, but long retired. It so happened that I was able to meet with him at a local Trail of Tears event in 2019 and I talked to him for several hours. We talked about my predicament and he suggested that I go to a local tribal community meeting and pose my problem to those in attendance and he was sure that someone would be more than willing to help me. In that conversation, I brought up the idea of cultural appropriation (not in that term) and suggested that I would like to discuss this problem with someone, or some group, so that I could get a sense of what would be the right thing to do. After some thought, he advised me that he didn’t know of any such group, and that he surely couldn’t pretend to represent his tribe single-handedly to do this for me. I wasn’t disappointed at his response knowing how his tribe would handle such a situation.

    I am assuming that you are in the OA. I was too. I was inducted at summer camp in 1954, and concluded my membership the next summer. I had no idea what the OA was all about. I was just sitting there at the evening campfire on Wednesday night and these two big hulking indians came up to me and yanked me up off of the bench, put my right hand up on my left shoulder and one led me and the other one put his hands on me and steered me down to the campfire where I was slapped on my shoulder three times and another indian said something and then I was led back to a line of other scouts who were now candidates in the Order. At that time in our lodge, the Scouts were tapped out one night and the ordeal began right there. After all the candidates were tapped out, we were led out of the campfire circle back to the dining hall where we were sat down and told the legend of the Lenni Lenape – a rather impressive story for a 14-year-old who ate up things like this. We were told what to expect and what we were expected to do until evening meal tomorrow afternoon. After this, we were assigned two guides who took us out to somewhere in camp and told to stay in this spot until they came for me in the morning –build a small fire and meditate and then go to sleep for tomorrow would be fairly demanding.

    I was active in my lodge, the She Sheeb lodge, even serving 2 years as recording secretary. For the next several years I was very active in the lodge, participating in all their service projects and attending nearly all of their local activities. Then I graduated from school, attended college for 3 semesters, served 3 years in the U.S.M.C. and came home to begin life as an adult. I served for 3 years as Scoutmaster of my original Boy Scout Troop #31, during which I participated in several service projects of my She Sheeb lodge before getting married and becoming inactive in scouting in general. When my son joined Cub Scouts in about 1983/84, I became a member of the Cub Scout Committee and helped out on the Pine Wood Derby for his Pack. When he crossed over to Troop #39, I became a troop committee member and in 1988 I was asked to become Scoutmaster which I did until I retired in 2001. During that time, I was not active in the OA, because when I asked to purchase a current flap patch, I was told that I was no longer a member of the OA because I hadn’t paid any dues. This really perturbed me since I always considered that my membership was a result of me being an “honor camper” that I had earned back in 1954, and had nothing to do with paying dues. A $3.00 charge per year was not the issue, the way I was treated by someone who was probably 30 years my junior was what rubbed me wrong. So, that is where that stood for the last 33 years. I did get that patch and I did wear it on my uniform.

    And where am I today, and what are my conclusions about the OA?

    I could ask, what exactly is the purpose of the OA? What are the objectives of the OA. All I can say is that I was always told that the OA was a service organization, and that reinforced my ideas of why I was in the Order. I fully believed that it was an organization formed to handle service of other organizations/individuals/objectives. etc., since there isn’t a troop/district/council group established to handle those expectations. And as an associated objective, the Order is expected to promote camping, so those were worthy objectives to participate in. At this point, I agree with you and Dave McGrath that the Order of the Arrow should be laid to rest.

    But, what should be established in its place to handle those noteworthy objectives. I’m perceiving that “community service” as we came to understand it, is not very high on the priority list of about everyone associated with leadership, and I think it would be just another reason to phase the movement out of existence. From almost all the discussions on facebook, it appears that the interests of most scouts and scouters is obtaining Eagle, and without all that is built into obtaining Eagle, if you remove that “service obligation”, then you might just as well eliminate the race to the top. It means nothing that is associated with modern day living or the development of a particular character for which the Boy Scouts were established in the first place.

    I think our thoughts should be more directed to replacing the Order before we get around to dissolving it altogether.

    1. Aren Cambre Avatar
      Aren Cambre

      Thank you for this detailed commentary.

      I agree that we probably need to abolish OA. It has had plenty of time to reform itself. That it has consistently declined to do anything beyond piecemeal, baby-step actions, and that as of 2024 it has no published strategy to ending its problematic practices, lays bare that OA is unable or uninterested in changing.

      OA is unworthy of further existence.

      If you review OA’s component pieces, two stand out as useful. One I am familiar with, camp service. That seems to be the main point of starting OA. We could continue with a honor camper society whose main purpose is camp service. The other is goofy, but it’s a weird way of retaining older Scouts. That needs to be addressed by improvements to BSA’s program design, mainly pulling high schoolers out of BSA’s middle-school program (troops), then we salvage portions of OA’s programs, possibly NOAC and leadership training, that seem focused on a high-school audience.

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