1977: YMCA Princess & Indian Guides: “Can you imagine a group of non-Christian children and their fathers taking Catholic holy names such as Jesus Christ, Saint Paul or the Pope?” she said. “Can you imagine non-Christian children practicing communion, making a crucifix or saying, “Hail, Mary.”

Indians Advise YMCA

1975 Dec 21 Pampa Daily News 

      Denver - The kids at Y-Indian Guide meetings no longer use the word squaw, prance aimlessly around campfires or tuck feathers in their headdresses without first getting the approval of the people they represent. 

      Clarence Acoya, 45, a Pueblo who joined the YMCA's advisory board last year, said he believed the organization's parent-child program had improved since the all-Indian board was formed, and that it is providing one of the best solutions to the problems of urban life. 

      "The YMCA is concerned about teaching youths true Indian culture," Acoya said. "The program is successful because it is in harmony with the people it represents.”

      Bob Johnston, a consultant to the metropolitan Denver YMCA, said….  We have improved our understanding of the American Indian. We’re teaching little kids that Indians are real people and not savages or cartoon characters as portrayed in Hollywood movies and on television.”

      …. “One of the worst things you can do is insult their religion,” Johnston said. “We now actively seek the Indians’ advice and try to teach our people that they shouldn’t use such words.” 

      Johnston said YMCA officials also were told to stop using the word squaw because some Indian tribes associate it with a prostitute.

      “We also were told not to wear certain headdress feathers because of their religious meaning,” Johnston said. “Through such advice, we help fathers teach their kids to respect the Indian’s culture, and the child is better equipped to deal with people of different backgrounds later in life.”..        

        

1975 Dec 21 Pampa Daily News 

Local Indians want revamp of Indian Guides

by Deb Gray and Joe Hudson

1977 April 18, The Lincoln Star 

Hundreds of Lincoln parents and children gather twice each month in small Indian-life tribes.
      Many of them wear feathered headbands, take Indian names, beat drums, and collect “wampum” or does. They groups are encouraged to make beads, Indian costumes and a teepee.
      It’s all part of the YMCA-sponsored Indian Guides, Princess and Maidens programs, designed to strengthen parent-child companionship.
      But, with a renewed awakening in their cultural heritage, many local Indian leaders say they believe the programs should be revised. They support the programs’ family-strengthening goals, but think this can be done without insulting the contemporary Indian, according to Beatty Brasch, who has written a report on the Y-Princess program.
      Most complaints center on the father-daughter Y-Princess Manual, although Indian leaders object to what they say is the overriding theme of all of all these programs – mimicking Indians.
      In the Princess manual is music to an Omaha tribal prayer and a benediction, illustrated in sign language, addressed to the Great Spirit.
      The manual includes “10 Little Indians,” and lyrics sung to the tune of “Down by the Station” which start: “Down at the tee-pees, early in the morning…”
      Also including are rules for “Draw the Feather” on the Indian. The game is similar to “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”

Insensitivity Shown

      Corrina Drum, Omaha tribe member, said many activities mock the Indian image by using feathers, beads, and drum-beating, all of which have symbolic meaning in the Indian culture.
      Drum said many of the activities are “undeniably sacrilegious” because sacred rituals are being used by people who don’t know their meaning.
      “They make no attempt to address the contemporary Indian,” said Karen Biller, Lincoln Indian Center board member. “They treat the Indian culture as something dead, something that existed only in the past.”

      Local Indian leaders – including Ms. Buller and Indian Center Director Marshall Prichard – have taken the complaints to local YMCA officials.

      Raymond Wright, YMCA general manager, said the local YMCA has taken an “advocate’s role” in forwarding the complaints to national officials. He said the national headquarters will have to revise the manual.

      This could be a long process, he said, “It’s nothing that can be done overnight.”

      Jack Cole, director of the mid-American region of the YMCA, said that some changes will be made in the next Y-Princess manuals.

      Cole agreed that change could be a long time coming, primarily because of the YMCA’s structure. The Y, he explained, is a “grass-roots” organization bonded together throughout the country, not a “monolithically-owned organization out of New York City.”

      But MsBuller said the Indian complaints have, for the last three years, been passed between local and national offices and nothing has changed.

      The Indian community is being ignored, and many are now becoming discouraged, she said.

      Ms. Buller, a Comanche Indian, said the Indian Center had not yet planned any action if they feel their complaints continue to be ignored. “We’re not about a bomb a building or anything,” she said.

      But she did say a “good-old-fashioned demonstration” might be in order.

      The YMCA sponsors three organization for children based on Indian lore: the Indian Guides for fathers and sons, the Indian Princesses for fathers and daughters, and the Indian Maidens for mothers and daughters.

      Some Indians claim the Indian Guide manual is based on myth, not on fact.

MYTHS ABOUND

      Webster Robbins, instructor of ethnic studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said he questioned any relationship between the Indian Guide program and American Indian culture “both past and present.”

      The Y-Indian Princess manual tells its members to be sensitive to the religious beliefs of the Indians.

      The manual says that the Indian prayers are “sacred and meaningful to individual tribes” and that “misrepresentation would constitute a grave injustice to the American Indian.”

      But Indians claim that guideline aside, the book is insensitive. It encourages children to mouth religious ceremonies that they haven’t been taught to comprehend, Said Ms. Brach, a member of Indian concerns committees of the League of Women Voters and the Lincoln Fellowship of Churches.

      Indians object to allowing children to recite prayers addressed to the Great Spirit because they don’t know what they are praying to, Ms Brasch said. The Great Spirit in the Native American religion is not the same as the God of the Christian religion, she said.

      Indians also object to the use of the peace pipe, the most sacred object in the Sioux religion, she said.

      Indians object to the use of the ceremony of the Four Directions. In this Sioux ceremony, prayers are offered to each of the four directions, thanking them for their bounty and blessings to man and the world.

      Indians believe that the way the ceremony is handled in the Y-Princess program amounts to blasphemy, Ms. Brasch said.

      Ms. Brasch said white Christians might understand the Indian grievances if they walked a few steps in their moccasins. 

       “Can you imagine a group of non-Christian children and their fathers taking Catholic holy names such as Jesus Christ, Saint Paul or the Pope?” she said. “Can you imagine non-Christian children practicing communion, making a crucifix or saying, “Hail, Mary.”

      “Nobody would even consider going out and pretending he was a Jew or black or Puerto Rican,” Ms. Brasch said, “People just don’t think about what they’re doing.”

      YMCA officials say that the programs never internationally tried to malign Indian customs.   

A few photos from 1976

1976 Oct 17, News Journal 

1976 March 18 The Northside 

1976 Oct 20, Xenia Daily Gazette 

1976 Oct 13, The Signal 

1977 April 18, The Lincoln Star 

1977 April 18, The Lincoln Star