Native American Survey

[malraux]

24 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

depends upon the lodge and/or chapter. I have seen some extremely hi quality regalia used.

If we can't ensure that all regalia used is good to hi quality in every lodge, I have reservations about making this process a key part of the program.

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

1 hour ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

I have seen some extremely hi quality regalia used.

I'm not that familiar with rules for regalia, so I have what may be a basic question: are there rules (formal or informal) around needing to have a family connection to the place/people the regalia is for?

I ask because it reminds me a bit of how folk dress works in the Nordic countries. Each locale has its own and wearing it is a statement of being from the place the folk dress is from. They may not be commercially down, they must be hand-sown and ideally inherited. If you roll up to a Midsummer celebration in a folk dress for a place you have no connection to, you're going to be seen as a liar. It's just not done.

Last Midsummer, we went for a very traditional celebration in the area of Sweden that my family is from. It's pretty culturally conservative, to the point where one particular valley was still writing with runes in the 1800s. Since I have my grandmother's folk dress from the town we're from, I had a number of people in the local folk dress come and ask where it's from. Make no mistake, this was a "are you one of us" question, because it's from the same region as opposed to all the city slicker tourists coming there just for Midsummer. (I did not mention that we flew in from abroad!) Had I said "I bought this on the Internet because I thought it looked cool", that would have been highly frowned upon. 

They way you make a high-quality folk dress takes a lot of passed-down knowledge... In my grandmother's case, a lot of sewing, embroidery, and weaving classes. Can't imagine it's easy to make regalia either. That's what makes me wonder how you get high-quality regalia without a living connection to the tradition they come from.

[InquisitiveScouter]

1 minute ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

I'm not that familiar with rules for regalia, so I have what may be a basic question: are there rules (formal or informal) around needing to have a family connection to the place/people the regalia is for?

I ask because it reminds me a bit of how folk dress works in the Nordic countries. Each locale has its own and wearing it is a statement of being from the place the folk dress is from. They may not be commercially down, they must be hand-sown and ideally inherited. If you roll up to a Midsummer celebration in a folk dress for a place you have no connection to, you're going to be seen as a liar. It's just not done.

Last Midsummer, we went for a very traditional celebration in the area of Sweden that my family is from. It's pretty culturally conservative, to the point where one particular valley was still writing with runes in the 1800s. Since I have my grandmother's folk dress from the town we're from, I had a number of people in the local folk dress come and ask where it's from. Make no mistake, this was a "are you one of us" question, because it's from the same region as opposed to all the city slicker tourists coming there just for Midsummer. (I did not mention that we flew in from abroad!) Had I said "I bought this on the Internet because I thought it looked cool", that would have been highly frowned upon. 

They way you make a high-quality folk dress takes a lot of passed-down knowledge... In my grandmother's case, a lot of sewing, embroidery, and weaving classes. Can't imagine it's easy to make regalia either. That's what makes me wonder how you get high-quality regalia without a living connection to the tradition they come from.

AES,  I experienced this while I was in Sweden as well, and looked (admiringly) at it as a deep connection to familial, community, and cultural roots.  You have expressed well exactly what the issue is here... people who have no connection with something deeply meaningful (to those with a connection to the culture) are making attempts (often poor) to copy (with sometimes embarrassing results) for no reason other than some fictional ceremonial purposes.

Thank you for putting a "Scandanavian" slant on the context of this discussion.  It is helpful to shed light on the issue.

(Min fafar var Svensk.)

 

[InquisitiveScouter]

28 minutes ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

AES,  I experienced this while I was in Sweden as well, and looked (admiringly) at it as a deep connection to familial, community, and cultural roots.  You have expressed well exactly what the issue is here... people who have no connection with something deeply meaningful (to those with a connection to the culture) are making attempts (often poor) to copy (with sometimes embarrassing results) for no reason other than some fictional ceremonial purposes.

Thank you for putting a "Scandanavian" slant on the context of this discussion.  It is helpful to shed light on the issue.

(Min fafar var Svensk.)

 

P.S.  Approaching Midsommar 1987, I had the distinct pleasure of helping to construct the midsommarstång!! I went into the forest to help gather flowers and birch branches for the pole!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9bJpgyf1X4&ab_channel=GraceonTour

The Swedish Scouts taught me the song,  "Lasse går i ringen", and on Midsommar, we tried to break the record for dancing!!  (Apparently, there was such a thing.) The sun set around 10 PM (IIRC), but I only made it till about 3:30 AM before I gave out 😛  Sunrise was about 4:00 AM!!!

A new world of history, culture, food, and language opened to me by the International Camp Staff program of the BSA!! (Now cancelled... https://www.scouting.org/international/international-adventure/cancellation-of-the-international-camp-staff-program/) 

And a re-connection to some of my family roots!

BTW, the dress and embroidery were gorgeous!!

https://ritualtrip.com/midsummer/what-sweden

Thanks for the trip down memory lane 😜 

 

 

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

My pleasure, @InquisitiveScouter!

3:30 isn't bad! I guess it helps that you must all have been sober 😉 It's too bad that program was cancelled, because culture has to be lived. It's one thing to briefly meet people on holiday or at an international camporee or jamboree, and completely different to live with people from another country in their country. Even as an expat or an immigrant you bring with you a cultural bubble if you and your partner are from the same other place. You also understand your own culture better by comparison. My American husband called me a pagan for ten years before I realized what he was talking about. I thought he was kidding because I don't believe in or worship the old gods. He meant the connection to the wheel of the year. Fish in water! Very cool that you got to get in on the making of the pole, usually it's some historical society doing that bit.

Since it's hard to celebrate Midsummer on an individual level (I googled how to make a Midsummer pole and the instructions started "get a 20 m long pole..." 🙄) or even small-scale level (we tried with another half-Swedish family, not enough hands to go around the very provisionary pole to dance well), we just flew back last year so that our child will have danced around the Midsummer pole as a child and bound the flower crown and danced in the ring and sung the traditional songs and all that. They're American since we live here, but if they ever want to move to Europe having had some of these experiences in childhood will help them fit in. We were even able to find a children's workshop on maying (decorating with leaves and flowers) a small pole and then raising it into the foot in the traditional way with the 'scissors', picture attached. We faithfully bake the solstice ritual saffron bread every Yule as well and leave the porridge offering for our house gnome.

I did also have a spiritual motive, as that second article mentioned. My lineage pulls heavily on Bön, and I find this very comforting actually. Familiar even though I heard of it as an adult. It's given me some words to express what it is that we do at Midsummer and Yule/Christmas exactly, and why we find it so important that we still do it a thousand years after the Christians started trying to stamp it out. They got rid of a lot of other things, but Yule and Midsummer endure because they are our connection to our land and the nature dralas that live on it. Therefore, they are what makes us Swedish, and that's also why they are a cultural litmus test. That is also why we still teach our children about "the gnomes and trolls" as if they're real even though nobody thinks there's little physical people among the rocks and the trees or that proper mining safety requires offerings to the Lady of the Mountain. We still feel their presence in the samboghakaya, the mind realm of concepts.

Drala is a Tibetan word that means 'above' or 'beyond' the enemy, the enemy being anything that weakens our windhorse, our sense of flow. Drala is a way of describing the experience of the non-duality of the physical world, a way of being directly being inspired and uplifted by the wisdom and beauty that we experience through our sense perceptions. 

Sometimes a stone, a tree, or some other "thing" has an intangible presence that cannot be explained. It might not always be there, or only be there for a short period of time, but we often anthropomorphize it to make it easier to talk about. Those are the dralas, the gnomes and the trolls. Relating to the dralas is relating to yourself, the land, and if they're named dralas also your culture. Especially if you're wearing a folk dress, dancing the traditional dances and singing the traditional songs with a crown made literally out of the reflowering of the Earth on your head.

I saw somewhere that someone called BP "chief mystic" of the scout movement, and I totally get that. Both we Swedes and we scouts were forest bathing before anyone ever called it that. You are not separate from the forest; you are completely dependent on it, and it is completely dependent on you (to not ransack or pollute it). Being out there is profoundly soothing and calming. Non-duality is a lot easier to experience in nature. That's why the mountains call...

Anyway... kind of a big sidebar to the regalia. If anyone would like to continue with that please feel free.

[nolesrule]

On 3/19/2023 at 3:55 PM, Eagle94-A1 said:

depends upon the lodge and/or chapter. I have seen some extremely hi quality regalia used.

I'm not sure that matters much. You  can have high quality regalia and it still will appear as cosplay... just highly dedicated cosplay.

I can't tell you the number of times I've heard the word "cringy" used by scouts in reference to the Native American aspects of the OA.

 

And yes, I do recognize that my screen name refers to a university that uses Native American regalia and symbols... with permission (although there is no doubt in my mind that permission comes with a price tag).

[KublaiKen]

36 minutes ago, nolesrule said:

I can't tell you the number of times I've heard the word "cringy" used by scouts in reference to the Native American aspects of the OA.

Are we in the same Troop?

[Eagle94-A1]

58 minutes ago, nolesrule said:

I can't tell you the number of times I've heard the word "cringy" used by scouts in reference to the Native American aspects of the OA.

I have used that term myself lately, for both "Hollywood Indian" ceremonies and  Scout uniformed ceremonies.

But maybe I am spoiled. My lodge growing up had a relationship with the local nation, and had members on our LEC. One of the guys I worked with and did ceremonies with had an uncle on the tribal council. We worked with them to improve our regalia and make it more authentic.

Lately it seems as if folks could care less about truly mastering ceremonies. We practiced and memorized ceremonies back in the day. We worked on both chapter and personal regalia. sadly I have seen ceremonies thrown together with folks who have never rehearsed together before the event. I have seen folks read from scripts at podiums. I have seen Ordeal ceremonies where only 2 people read the script. And I have seen adults ad lib a Call Out not even in uniform.

Really sad thing is that the chapter heavily invested in researching authentic regalia and  spent money to by supplies needed to make the authentic regalia. But 10+ years after purchase, the itemsare still in sealed bags waiting to be made.

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

2 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Really sad thing is that the chapter heavily invested in researching authentic regalia and  spent money to by supplies needed to make the authentic regalia. But 10+ years after purchase, the itemsare still in sealed bags waiting to be made.

Perhaps this is an opportunity to turn your sadness into some local young dancers' joy, if you have that live connection to a nation and scouts don't care to put the work in. If those materials are anything like the materials for folk dresses, they are very expensive and cost is always a barrier.

Those kinds of relationships institutionalize poorly, though. I can't imagine that all OA lodges have an 'invite' to learn more from someone in a local nation willing and able to take the time. You can't mandate what people outside your organization do. And you also can't mandate intentions or interest even for members of the organization.

Outside the family, the personal chemistry has to be right for someone who does know old traditions to teach someone who doesn't. The scouts at @InquisitiveScouter's camp did so because he was a fellow scout and so he dropped into an existing bubble of friendly Swedishness without resistance. My husband thinks Swedes are very social, friendly, and talkative because every time he goes there he drops right into an existing warm social atmosphere. (This is, of course, not what foreigners typically say about Sweden.) You need someone to like you enough to include and teach you, and that's on a person-to-person basis, plus people have jobs and families. An organization can't possibly count on that kind of real learning being available.

[qwazse]

3 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

… Lately it seems as if folks could care less about truly mastering ceremonies. …

I think this could be a part of the problem. Some lodges are in a rut with a lack of passion in mastering dance and regalia. It communicates carelessness and, dare I say, lack of reverence.
And it’s a scary proposition. I don’t mind non-Arabs learning Arabic.  I like that Queen appropriated a “b’ism Allah” in Bohemian Rhapsody. But, it crushes my soul on behalf of my Muslim friends when scouts rattle off translations of selected militant Quoranic verses to make a point — without taking the time to recite half a Sura in the original language. But, even worse, are folks with a one-line (or one word) understanding of the Middle East. There’s less of that now because our fellow citizens have started to actually talk to their refugee friends, cook some of their food, and quote some of their proverbs (accurately).

So there are two wrong paths: to appropriate First Nations glibly, and to never appropriate anything of them at all.

[Eagle94-A1]

Regalia was not mine to give away, even though the chapter left it behind when they moved, And yes I know a dancer who would have loved some of the items they had. The supplies went to the lodge instead. do not know what will happen to it.

Now the photo album that was in storage, I have that. I donated the album and all the photos in it way back when. Good memories of a better time,

[InquisitiveScouter]

35 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

I have used that term myself lately, for both "Hollywood Indian" ceremonies and  Scout uniformed ceremonies.

But maybe I am spoiled. My lodge growing up had a relationship with the local nation, and had members on our LEC. One of the guys I worked with and did ceremonies with had an uncle on the tribal council. We worked with them to improve our regalia and make it more authentic.

Lately it seems as if folks could care less about truly mastering ceremonies. We practiced and memorized ceremonies back in the day. We worked on both chapter and personal regalia. sadly I have seen ceremonies thrown together with folks who have never rehearsed together before the event. I have seen folks read from scripts at podiums. I have seen Ordeal ceremonies where only 2 people read the script. And I have seen adults ad lib a Call Out not even in uniform.

Really sad thing is that the chapter heavily invested in researching authentic regalia and  spent money to by supplies needed to make the authentic regalia. But 10+ years after purchase, the itemsare still in sealed bags waiting to be made.

Again, Native American Heritage Preservation is not in our mission set... and never was.

Another "cringy" is watching drumming, singing, and dancing... especially when there is no meaning attached,  Then it becomes blind mimicry, and pretty bad at that.

 

[SiouxRanger]

I am so terribly late to this discussion.

As a child, we surfaced collected Native American stone artifacts from local farm fields. (With permission.)

My father instructed us on the significance of the peoples who had gone before. We never collected bone artifacts, only stone ones. (All in the plow zone.)

And so, I learned to understand and respect that unknown to me society of Native Americans.

What effort it took to survive in the Midwest, and even more so in the High Plains.

I have monumental respect for the Native American societies. And their survival knowledge. And not mere survival, they thrived.

And there is this turmoil over "cultural appropriation."

I have much to learn about this, and so working my way.

But, in my experience, I have not seen any depiction of Native American culture that was disrespectful of Native Americans.

And maybe there is such on the toxic web.

Many Universities, Colleges, High Schools, etc, in years past, have adopted Native American symbols as their school's mascots.

I do not know of a single school that has adopted a Native American mascot for the purpose of ridiculing the mascot.

As near as I can tell, adopting a Native American symbol/icon, is a supreme showing of respect.

But, I am not a Native American.

And Native Americans I invite you o post, 

 

I do not yet understand Native American objections to 

[Eagle94-A1]

37 minutes ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

Again, Native American Heritage Preservation is not in our mission set... and never was.

While never a mission of the OA, it has occurred. I've posted in other threads how local Arrowmen did help preserve Native American Heritage.  Especially in the early days of the OA when it was illegal to practice aspects of Native culture.

[KublaiKen]

On 3/19/2023 at 12:09 PM, mrjohns2 said:

Interesting as the youth members of my troop want the Native American imagery removed. 

This. I am sure sentiment varies widely among Scouts, among adults, and among areas of the country, perhaps, but I only know of only one Scout for whom it is a draw (not my Troop or even Chapter). For many it is met with disbelief and disapproval.