At an annual YMCA campout Saturday in Amboy, Ill., about 700 dads and daughters in faux Native American regalia will beat tom-toms and light a giant bonfire–a sign of commitment to each other and to the “tribe.”
Next year at this time, however, the event will be wholly different. Ending a tradition that started in 1926 and involves thousands of Illinois families each year, the YMCA of the USA is quietly eliminating the Native American theme from its “Y-Indian Guides” and “Y-Indian Princesses” programs, saying it perpetuates racial stereotypes.
Already the customary greeting of “How-How” has been stricken. Participants are now known only as Guides and Princesses.
For a limited time, the program still will feature neighborhood “tribes” that meet for Indian lore and other activities. They may wear feathers and beads and have vests emblazoned with patches with tribe names. But by next September those trappings also must go.
To supporters, the popular YMCA-sanctioned activity instills respect, not racism, and scrapping the Indian focus will reduce the program to something meaningless. Some people feel so strongly about the decision that they say they may break away from the local YMCA.
“It’s just a shame,” said Howard Levine, a Wheaton attorney who was eager to bond with his 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, over crafts and campouts. When Elizabeth became a Y-Princess last month, she took the same name her mother used in the program years ago–Little Star.
“Just as she came of age, the program is ending–and by taking away the rich history, it won’t be the same,” Levine said. “This is nothing more than political correctness taken to an extreme.”
YMCA officials say the program had to be overhauled because of the difficulty of espousing values of diversity and tolerance while being associated with practices that some deem offensive.
“Complaints alone did not drive the decision,” said Barbara Taylor, a senior consultant at the YMCA of the USA’s Chicago headquarters. “It was just time to move on.”
It is the same debate that has embroiled hundreds of other institutions, from the University of Illinois’ Chief Illiniwek to Florida State University, where outrage over fans’ tomahawk “chop” is so common that the football stadium has cordoned off a special area for protesters.
More than 180,000 children, typically ages 5 to 11, and their fathers are in the program nationwide, including about 25,000 in the Chicago area. Other strongholds include Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Discussions about retiring the program began in the mid-1980s, but it wasn’t until September 2001 that the YMCA’s national office directed the change to Guides for boys and Princesses for girls.
In September 2003, the rest of the Native American lore will be purged and a new program unveiled. Though nothing official has been announced, a task force is pursuing an explorer or naturalist motif, insiders said.
Randy Turzinski, a chief in Glen Ellyn, wonders if any of the old tribal patches on the vest will be allowed.
“If the new theme is RVs, at least the Winnebago tribe will be OK,” he said ruefully.
Because local YMCAs are autonomous, the national group’s decision would not necessarily be binding locally, but most are expected to comply. No funding comes from the national, but it does distribute patches and other programming materials.
“What makes it unique is the father/child time together, not the Indian theme,” Taylor said. “If we can come back with something else that has broad appeal, but still keeps the core that has made it so successful in the first place, then we’re looking at this as a win for everybody.”
Some within the organization acknowledge the change will not be easy.
`Right thing to do’
“It’s the right thing to do, but it’s going to be very tough,” said Steve Dahlin, who was a parent leader for 11 years before becoming a vice president of YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, which owns and operates 37 Y’s from Lake Zurich to Harvey. “You’d be flabbergasted at how seriously these guys take their Indian rituals.”
Barry “Night Owl” Yamaji is among them.
“It’s akin to taking an engine out of a Mercedes and putting it in a Geo Prizm,” he said. “You can still market it as a Mercedes, but it’s not.”
A UPS driver by day, Yamaji of Gurnee rose through the ranks to become national chief, head of all the other volunteer chiefs. He has devoted 12 years to the program and continues to edit the National Drumbeats newsletter even though his three children are no longer involved. “There’s a love for this program that you just can’t explain,” he said.
Yamaji believes that the Y-USA is underestimating the backlash and suspects that although some groups will go along with a replacement, others will either develop their own theme or break away.
Tom Sidman, a volunteer with the Tri-Town YMCA in Lombard for 15 years, agrees. “People are evaluating their options . . . but I would not be surprised to see people move away from their Y’s entirely.”
To the uninitiated, such loyalty is mystifying. While some communities already have toned down the Indian content, others–including the Buehler YMCA in Palatine, the Lattof YMCA in Des Plaines, Tri-Town YMCA in Lombard, Indian Boundary YMCA in Downers Grove and the B.R. Ryall YMCA in Glen Ellyn–are clinging tenaciously to tradition.
“We may have been doing it wrong, but my kids learned more about Native Americans than they ever would have by reading a book,” said Joe Goldberg, a.k.a. “Golden Hawk,” of Wheaton.
The program was founded in 1926 by Harold S. Keltner, a director of the YMCA’s St. Louis chapter, and–as both sides are quick to point out–an Ojibway Indian guide named Joe Friday. Today, about 8 to 14 parent-child pairs meet in neighborhood “tribes” for camaraderie, crafts and campouts.
It isn’t just the loss of beads and feathers, but the way the change was decided that angers many dads. “It was a done deal,” said Goldberg, who as federation chief presides over several “nations” in the western suburbs. “We had very little input. Why not identify and eliminate what’s offensive and keep the ritual?”
2 views from Native Americans
To some Native American activists, though, the culture is not the white man’s to embrace, no matter how well meaning. It falls to members of an ethnic group to control how their own customs and traditions are portrayed, said Vernon Bellecourt of the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis.
“It’s too late for reform,” he said. “People have no concept of the real history of America and the holocaust that claimed at least 16 million of us. . . . We must work to eliminate these racist images, which are really a cancer on America’s popular culture.”
But the Native American community is not united on the issue. Some see the program as a way of keeping customs alive and believe that, with education, sensitivity could be heightened and the theme retained.
Orrin Lewis, a Cherokee Indian who lives in Evanston, has a Web site that offers 10 cultural respect guidelines for the YMCA programs, including: Participants should avoid talking in broken English, referring to women as “squaws” and using the names of real Indians.
But Turzinski knows that his days as chief of Logewhego Nation are numbered. “It will be a challenge to go cold turkey . . . but we’ll go along. The way I see it, you can either be rebels and fight it or be conformists and get with the times.”
