Despite (weak) promises, OA still needs to be abolished

In December 2024, the Order of the Arrow (OA) released its 2025-2027 business plan. This is OA’s latest drop in a reform plan where it allegedly will abandon 110 years of cultural theft. Its new vision is to be a retention tool for high school-aged youth.

OA’s plan is unworkable. It is not ending cultural theft. Also, its new direction prolongs Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) 115 years of failure at retaining older youth.

It is time to abandon this failed strategy. Guided by Move Forward: Save Scouting, BSA should address its retention problem with improved programs. This makes OA’s new direction redundant. BSA should repurpose OA’s beneficial elements and leave behind its racist legacy.

OA’s inadequate plan: papering over the babysitting regime

OA’s latest proposal papers over BSA’s failed approach to older-youth engagement.

For 115 years, BSA has maintained a weird belief that it can retain high-school youth by saddling them with babysitting chores while falsely conveying the chores as leadership.

BSA knows its babysitting regime is a failure. That’s why it uses shiny objects to distract older youth from the chores. These shiny objects are high adventure, camp staff, and OA. While high adventure and staff are valuable opportunities, once done, the high schooler returns to babysitting chores.

Despite 115 years of this experiment–the babysitting regime and shiny objects–BSA has never addressed the “older boy youth problem”. Older-youth retention is as poor as always.

OA’s plan is to prop up BSA’s failed babysitting regime. We need a better approach.

OA still cannot be trusted

Even if its latest initiative was viable, OA’s trustworthiness deficits remain unresolved. It remains unwilling to genuinely reform or move away from key aspects of its racist legacy.

First, I need to clarify the two parts of OA’s tribal mockery:

• Ceremonies: This refers to the pretendian parodies OA uses for its core rites, like the call-out ceremony seen at camporees and summer camps.
• AIA: This is “American Indian Activities”, allegedly authentic employment of tribal culture. Rarely done under tribal supervision, it’s usually cultural theft.

Secret tribal agreements

Starting January 1, 2026, OA’s American Indian Activities (AIA) must occur under supervision of a Native American tribe. However, OA permits undisclosed tribal agreements that nobody will verify.¹ This wink to cultural thieves aligns with OA’s longstanding problems with secrecy.

Once you’re in OA long enough, you’ll hear of local fairy tales about some mysterious Native American who “blessed” a lodge’s cultural theft many decades ago. As you ask for specifics, you typically find Canadian girlfriends: “I wish you could meet my Canadian girlfriend, But you can’t because she is in Canada.”²

Given OA’s 110 years of open cultural theft and dishonesty about its intent to change (see the rest of this article), there’s no reason to believe that OA at its word. Secret agreements cannot be distinguished from endemic Canadian-girlfriend fairy tales.

Taking 4 years to rewrite children’s fantasy fiction (ceremonies)

Still unaddressed is the worst part of OA’s tribal mockery, the ceremonies. This includes the ceremony that most Scouts aged 10 and up eventually see–the call out–and ceremonies only viewed by insiders, such as those relating to Ordeal, Brotherhood, and Vigil.

These ceremonies are just children’s fantasy fiction. They are based on a fake legend. Their inauthenticity, combined with how they so tackily steal Native American culture, renders these ceremonies open mockery of tribes. (Did you know OA founder E. Urner Goodman regretted that the ceremonies’ lies filled the minds of youth, displacing accurate history of tribes?)

Allegedly, OA is rewriting these ceremonies to remove the mockery of tribes. But this lacks credibility.

First, this rewriting started in fall 2021. As of press time, the rewriting has been going on for 3.5 years. Allegedly, they will be released in July 2025. That’s almost four years!

It does not take 4 years to revise children’s fantasy fiction! In my spare time, I could define new themes in a few evenings and churn out revised scripts in three more weeks. One month! But OA needs 48 months?

Even worse, around two years ago, a group led by the founder of OA’s elangomat system offered the OA national committee fully revised ceremonies that have no cultural theft. OA’s response? Pound sand.

OA, where’s these theft-free ceremonies? You have nothing to show after 3.5 years?

This isn’t adding up.

Still recommending cultural theft in costumes

The United States pivoted to tribal self-determination in the 1950s through the 1970s. Part of this involves respect, allowing tribes to own their own customs.

Many decades after the pivot, OA still recommends mocking tribes with cultural theft. For example, when acting out its phony legend, OA wants actors’ pretendian antics to be done in “American Indian attire”, recommending that by putting it first in a list! The first-in-a-list status is not couched beyond weak “should” language, mere recommendations that lodges may freely ignore.

This language could have been updated years ago. That it’s still present and prominent in 2025 speaks volumes.

Truck-sized hole: keep all the stolen, parody names!

Even worse are the names. OA’s divisions corresponding to councils and districts–lodges and chapters–nearly always mock tribes by using names that are thieved from Native American dialects or that are made-up, indigenous-ish parodies of tribal culture.

Per OA’s National AIA Transition Plan and Timeline, “[t]here are no changes required to lodge or chapter names, totems“!

This. Is. Huge!

Let’s explore the power of names:

• “A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.” -Henry David Thoreau³
• “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” -Dale Carnegie⁴
• “Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.” -W. H. Auden⁵
• “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” -Confucius⁶
• “Your name is your brand, and your brand is your reputation. Protect it wisely.” -Richard Branson

Your name is your essence, your brand. Your name defines you in crucial ways.

When an organization’s name evokes a theme, that theme is tied to the organization.

Nearly all lodge names use or approximate Native American names or reference Native American concepts. OA’s own names cements its theme, a continued commitment to Native American parody and tribal mockery!

How many of these lodges sought permission from the tribe who really owns the name? Considering OA’s 110-year-old habit of stealing Native American culture for its own profit, it’s unlikely we’ll find many.

An example: Onerahtokha Lodge

In fall 2024, a new lodge was formed in Virginia, Onerahtokha Lodge. Onerahtokha is a Mohawk word⁷, meaning the time of budding. Contemporarily, it refers to the month April⁸. It’s also used as a name.⁹

Did this lodge get permission to use this name? Unlikely. Again, given OA’s pattern, it’s reasonable to assume the word is stolen. Onerahtokha Lodge has never advanced a case that it sought permission.

The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe would be the only Mohawk people¹⁰ that meets OA’s standard for a Mohawk tribe that a lodge may work with.¹¹ I have asked this tribe’s public relations staff for a comment. As of press time, they have only acknowledged my inquiry and shared that I am one of several asking them, but they did not provide evidence of collaboration. (I do not blame them! Several Native Americans and their allies have cautioned me that tribes may have little desire to work with an organization defined by a century of cultural theft. If the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe responds, I’ll update this article.)

I also note that the historic territory of the Mohawk people appears to be well north of this lodge. Altogether, we have no basis to dispute that this lodge did the normal OA thing, stealing the culture of a distant tribe.

Here’s what’s jarring: National knew about this!¹² OA’s Eastern Region Merger Team, part of the national organization, guided this lodge’s formation. Certainly OA’s national representatives would have been aware of OA’s prevailing guidance, released in December 2023, of “For OA lodges using or planning to use American Indian traditions—but not yet engaging with local tribal leadership—the national OA committee expects them to establish these relationships before proceeding with existing or new programs.”¹³ It’s hard to see how stealing a word from a distant tribe–the reasonable assumption we have no way to rebut–meets the spirit of this guidance.

Onerahtokha Lodge, if I am wrong, if you gained permission from a tribe to use this word, you’re invited to show the receipts. I’ll happily celebrate that here.

For more fun, look at one of this lodge’s chapter names: “Shawanogi”. A Shawnee word meaning “Southerners”, Westerners corrupted it to “Shawnee”, which became the tribe name.¹⁴ Did this lodge get permission from the Shawnee Tribe to use its word?¹⁵

OA is not stopping cultural theft

Let’s recap:

• OA lodges and chapters will keep naming themselves with stolen or spoofed Native American words.
• OA’s four-year timeline to rewrite its children’s fantasy fiction is absurd.
• OA allows secret tribal agreements that nobody can verify.

With these, OA makes clear that it wishes to perpetuate its cultural thievery.

A better plan: abolish OA, repurpose some of it

Instead of papering over BSA’s poor program design, we need to move beyond it. This means redesigning our main programs so that they are relevant to middle schoolers, high schoolers, and young adults. Once that is done, OA’s new mission is obsolete.

Also, per above and per my prior update, OA is unrepentant, refusing to move past its shameful legacy.

OA has one morally straight path forward: abolishment. We can salvage its useful parts towards proper ends in line with Move Forward: Save Scouting. This means:

1. End all Native American-themed programming in BSA. OA’s Native American-themed programming is cultural theft, for OA’s profit.¹⁶ Going forward, BSA respects tribal ownership of their own customs and rejects the white-savior trope that tribes depend on, benefit from, or are expected to appreciate outsiders employing their culture. Those interested in exploration of Native American culture, beyond the Indian Lore merit badge (which is the product of a good collaboration!), must pivot to “morally straight”: Collaborate directly with tribes or participate in powwows, on your own. (Note: When conducted in collaboration with tribes, council or unit activities are fine. So are episodic national activities that support other programs. But formal, enduring national activities that use Native American culture must end.)
2. Discontinue OA’s camp promotions. These were always dumb, just dispassionate youth going through the paces. I did them as a kid, and I’ve seen them as an adult. They have no value.
3. Transition all local, section, and national OA events, training programs, and officers to Venturing. OA’s events are oriented towards high schoolers. They will be continued under Venturing, led by Venturing Officers Associations. In some cases, they will be new-to-Venturing events. For example, I suspect OA’s section conclaves will transition to Venturing territory events. In other cases, their strengths will be merged with existing programs, especially on the council level. High-school-aged OA officers will find new homes on council, territory, and national VOAs.
4. Transition all young-adult officers and members to a new Rovers program. They will have ground-level opportunities to kickstart a new Scouting opportunity for post-high-school through age 25.
5. Transition camp service to a new society. This new society will be freed of cultural theft and OA’s woo woo. It will be open access, no longer gated by a popularity contest. The society may or may not be formal or governed on a national level; it could just be a brand that local and national-high-adventure service activities run under.

Ironically, creating a new service society fulfills the original goal of Order of the Arrow:

[OA’s] purpose, as a Local Council activity, was to single out, from various Troops, outstanding campers with the service spirit, and bring them into a fellowship to improve and further camping.

William D. Murray¹⁷, The History of the Boy Scouts of America, Boy Scouts of America, 1937, p. 386 (emphasis added)

With these changes, OA will make the ultimate gift to the movement, realizing its original goal while helping assure Scouting’s future.

Footnotes

1. Per OA’s National AIA Transition Plan and Timeline, agreements are fully managed by councils. Nobody outside of councils reviews the agreements. Councils simply check a box on a form each year to signify whether an agreement exists. ↩︎
2. This is a line from “My Girlfriend, Who Lives in Canada“, a song from the Avenue Q musical. ↩︎
3. https://www.thoreau-online.org/a-week-on-the-concord-and-merrimack-rivers-page137.html ↩︎
4. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1398947-remember-that-a-person-s-name-is-to-that-person-the ↩︎
5. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9503096-proper-names-are-poetry-in-the-raw-like-all-poetry ↩︎
6. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/106313-the-beginning-of-wisdom-is-to-call-things-by-their ↩︎
7. https://x.com/chiefswood/status/1247508092373340160 ↩︎
8. https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/mohawklanguageresource/chapter/days-months/ ↩︎
9. https://www.concordia.ca/cunews/offices/advancement/2021/04/19/onerahtokha-karlie-marquis-named-executive-director-of-mohawk-council-of-kahnawake.html ↩︎
10. Several groups who identify as Mohawk. The only USA federal- or state-recognized Mohawk tribe is the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe. ↩︎
11. “American Indian Activities in the Order of the Arrow at 2024 NOAC“, Order of the Arrow, December 22, 2023. It mentions “574 federally recognized tribes/Indian nations across the United States” as who “lodges should seek approval from…to use [tribal culture] and ensure that our members understand their proper context.” While later documents expanded allowed tribes to include state-recognized tribes, it appears that the federally recognized Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe is the only Mohawk tribe in the USA. ↩︎
12. Ibid. That announcement was created by the national organization and sent shockwaves through OA, so it’s reasonable to assume that it was well known. Someone acting in good faith would have sought permission from a tribe before using that tribe’s word for a lodge name. As no agreement with any tribe has been publicly conveyed by this lodge, and given OA’s 110 years of theft, it’s quite likely this was simply more cultural theft. ↩︎
13. Ibid. ↩︎
14. Oren F. Morton, A History of Pendleton County, West Virginia, 1910, p. 15 ↩︎
15. The other three chapter names are fine. One is a portmanteau of the names of counties it encompasses. The other two are named after local rivers. While those local rivers use Native American names, this is a great case of “nothing is perfectly black and white.” It is generally acceptable to use local place names that are not not in dispute. ↩︎
16. There are notable exceptions, like local collaboration with Florida’s Seminole tribe, but these are rare. Nearly all of BSA’s employment of tribal customs is inauthentic or for BSA’s own profit, divorced from a relationship with or benefit to tribes. ↩︎
17. Mr. Murray was a charter member of BSA’s National Executive Board. When he wrote this book, he was its chairman. ↩︎