1972 - All-White 'Indians' Irk Native American.. Meet the Michigamua

All-White 'Indians' Irk Native American

By Kerta Thomas
1972 June 25, Detroit Free Press

           “Then to the mighty oak of Tappan

             Dashed the screaming yelling redmen

      A phrase like “screaming yelling redmen” cuts deep for Mrs. Virginia Barner, a full-blooded American Indian, who is a University of Michigan graduate student. The poem in the university’s student newspaper caught her eye.

          “To the tree of Indian legend (the Tappan Oak is a historic U-M tree)

            Where the white men pale and trembling

            Stood around the mighty oak tree

            Warriors choice of paleface nation.”

      The ritual chant, belonging to Michigamua , the senior men’s honorary society, printed in an April issue of the Michigan Daily, irritated Mrs. Barner as she continued to read:       

           “… painted demons 

            Swooped and caught their prey like eagles

            Loud the way cry stirred the stillness

            As they seized their hapless captives

            Forth they bore them to the wigwam

            There to torture at their pleasure.

      It was almost enough to make Mrs. Barner, one of fewer than 50 Indians registered at the university, do something.

      “I wasn’t too surprised,” she said of the poem. “Because that’s about what we get from the white students in war paint impersonating Indians,” and she decided to take action. 

      She filed a complaint on May 8 with the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, charging the university with permitting Michigauma to ridicule and distort the American Indian culture and demanding an end to the yearly ritual. 

      The Civil Rights Commission has taken no action on her complaint, and a spokesman said no hearing has been set.

      The man who oversees the Michigauma ritual, which includes the war-painted male students carrying on a mock battle and duckwalking across campus, is faculty adviser John Feldkamp, whose Michigauma name is “Drooping Feather.”

      Feldkamp, also director of university housing and once a member of the “Tribe,” as Michigauma members refer to it, said he was surprised by the complaint, the first in the group’s 50-year history.

      He said Michigauma has always had the highest respect for Indian tradition but admitted the group did not have any American Indian members.

      Mrs. Barner explained her feelings about the honorary society, about its members’ names and even the term, “Indian.” 

      “I prefer to be called Native American rather than Indian because we are not from Indian,” she said. “That name belongs to somebody else. Indians, in their own language, call themselves whatever the name for themselves is, usually just Man.”

      “I am proud of being a Native American,” she says. She was born in British Columbia into the Nishga (Wolf) clan.

      “Everything in the culture reflects Native Americans, but whites won’t admit it. Food, like so-called Irish potatoes, corn, pineapple, Boston beans, turkey, tacos, chili, hominy grits, all originated with Native Americans.”

      Mrs. Barner, mother of a married daughter and two other children, is basically a quiet woman who lives in a quiet neighborhood in the Ann Arbor area.

      “I am not a militant,” she said, “but I found out that you can’t make anybody listen to you unless you get their attention first… unless you assert yourself.”

      It is ironic now, Mrs. Barner said, that “their disgusting spring ritual is the only thing Michigauma does that has anything to do with my people.” 

1972 June 25, Detroit Free Press