Charles Kader: Boy Scouts continue to play with our tribal cultures

Hayley Cook was decorating the Michigan State University (MSU) campus landmark Rock on Farm Lane when the taunts picked up. “They said I looked like a boy, due to my short hairstyle,” Cook told her campus newspaper, The State News. The young commenters themselves were boys. More specifically they were from the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) affiliate organization, the Order of the Arrow (OA), on campus to celebrate the group’s centennial anniversary.

Gathering at the university were 15,000 OA members for the week long event. MSU campus social activists were alerted to the OA program by a letter to the editor published in the campus newspaper, which was written by a doctoral candidate in the music department who also had been an OA member. Phillip Rice described the faux Native theme and agenda that he was familiar, and now disgusted with. In turn, Ms. Cook, who is a member of the Mohawk Nation, and another former student decided to paint the MSU boulder, referring to the cultural appropriation concerns that they shared.

“They went out of their way to sit at the rock in the middle of the night, after their camp schedule, to heckle us at the Rock. We were like, ‘don’t they have stuff to do in the morning or curfews?’ I've worked in the dorms. I know camps do curfews or else they get in trouble,” Cook said to The State News.

The local newspaper provided extensive coverage of the opinion letter as well as the organized events, evoking numerous reader comments. Many of the readers had knowledge of the BSA and defended the OA assembly. Both Cook and Rice were scrutinized as to their motivations by some of the supporters. Some of the OA supporters questioned why they did not see any “full-blooded” Native people exhibiting any sense of outrage. Another commenter said she was an adult campus jogger who was yelled and whistled at by the throngs of juveniles throughout her workout, leaving her uneasy.