Indian Lore Merit Badge

In reading your requirements for this badge, I was greatly saddened when I read requirement 5a. This badge is suppose to be about Native American heritage. The assignment on 5a should be about the impact on the First Nations when the white man intruded into their environment and lifestyle. Please do something about this requirement and please change the name of this badge as well. It should be more appropriately like "First Nation or Native American history badge.  

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I was surprised but the prefered term is American Indian. I just went to the new Smithsonian Museum in DC and it was titled American Indian.

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Gail - Webster's dictionary defines "Lore" as something that is learned:  

a :  knowledge gained through study or experience  
b :  traditional knowledge or belief

The MB title is fine.

Doesn't requirement 5a expect the Scout to appreciate how helpful the Native American people were to the newly arrived Europeans?  I believe you read it as if it was problematic for the Europeans to encounter the Native Americans.  I think you're misinterpreting the requirement.

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re: 5a
The question does ask for an appreciation that the first European settlements would never have survived without First-Nation Assistance.  You can certainly ask them to name which tribes and in which locations did this occur.  Direct account information is available for interactions in the first five years along long island, for example.  I'm from Canada but it was the same at all the first landing sites. I do have issue that none of your requirements ask the scout to acknowledge the genocide of the first nations by and in the United States and Canada over the past 500years; nor does it ask to reflect on the social consequences of these actions today, and what is still affecting their health socially, politically, economically.  for example would the scout know that in Canada the last residential school closed in the 1996; and what were the findings of the truth and reconciliation commission? and what is the UN Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples?

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I'm from the council where Irving Southworth first developed the requirements for the Indian lore MB. Certainly, the US has a lot to answer for regarding the treatment of Native Americans/American Indians. I KNEW "Southy", and he was trying to encourage Scouts to PRESERVE the heritage of those peoples/tribes!!(I was one of them!!)I think some of the posts have some good ideas-a knowledge of "Indian Lore" or "American Indian Lore" isn't complete without the knowledge of what was done to them, often quite brutally. But I do think that "political correctness" should be avoided. I think requirement 5A is trying to stimulate some thought in the Scouts, of how the "First Americans" assisted European settlers, sometimes to their own benefit, but in the long run to their great detriment. HOWEVER, my own contact with American Indians has often been very disappointing, with their anger often directed at those who would help them and want to learn their customs and ways(like me), much of which has been forgotten. I am reminded of the famous Koshare Indian Scout troop in La Junta, CO, where there are NO Native American boys in it!(And they LIVE there) I asked their drummer(Native American man) about it, and he said "I'm proud of my White-Boy Indians. The local Native American kids just aren't interested." I think the name could be modified to American Indian Lore, but going past that just renders the whole idea inconsequential, when Irving Southworth et. al. sought to keep the lore alive

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Give Indigenous people their land and traditions back. Have Indigenous cultural leaders teach Boy Scounts about traditional ecological knowledge. Requirement 5a is abhorrent. The First Peoples of the Western Hemishphere were not European and they existed and still exist. We should not be hypothesizing what would have happened if they weren't here. We should be analyzing the very real effects of European colonizers on Native peoples and encouraging our kids to recognize the harmful impact European colonizers left.

Bill, the white people that I have met have "often been very disappointing." They take Native people's culture and don't give them any credit.

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On my mothers side I have a connection to the Eastern Band of the Cherokee people. The Merit Badge was developed to have Scouts learn something of the Indian Culture, beliefs and way of living (or surviving is more correct) The Native peoples were used and abused and they did all they could to stop the encroachment of lands. In the end the power that came to bear made it impossible for the Native peoples to get any chance of a just or fair solution. There is little we can do to rectify it today. Lets recognize that this MB in some degree makes our Scouts aware of the Native peoples and some things about them.

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Totally agree with Gail and others ! Wow... reallly ? The MB has to offer the scouts the opportunity to reflect on each side’s perpective. After all, American Indians were THE native people, and certainly did not ask for their lifestyle to be disrupted and destroyed.  I was going to suggest this MB for my scout, but changed my mind because of 5a which promotes a revisionist thinking.

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I truly believe and have always taught (for more than 25 years) that requirement 5A is a way to get the youth to consider how impossible it would have been for the Europeans to survive as a group had they not encountered indigenous people who taught them about local foods, how to grow them, and how to forage for local edibles - and gave them compatriots to prevent the Europeans from possible slaughter by warring tribes. In short, the Europeans would not have been able to establish colonies without the help they received, and WE "Americans" would not be here today. It would be a very different place and all of us need to consider how our actions can influence and disrupt the lives of others. Caring for the land and for others is/always has been an integral part of native life.

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"Native American" and "American Indian" mean two different things and my conversations with people in the Cherokee Nation is that they prefer "American Indian".  I also definitely think 5a should be reworded to discuss the genocide to disease, aggression, and stealing and reprogramming children.  Also, not every state has American Indians and many powwows are organized by fake tribes so perhaps there should be an alternate requirement such as visiting the website of a real tribe and talk about concerns they face.

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This merit badge has been a great learning experience for my son. It's the first step onto a path that leads to more knowledge, should he choose to do so. Thank you to all the American Indian instructors for making this a memorable experience. If anyone has a say so or complaint about this merit badge's content, it should come from them. I didn't see any of them in the conversation, so scout on!

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I was recently asked to assist with the merit badge by my son. It’s been a while since I earned mine (close on to 60yrs). I’m trying to travel the red road as an ally. While learning past cultures are important, we need to learn how the cultures were striped. The correct legal term is American Indian as found in treaties. Some of the practices are sacred and private as is the use of materials used. Many of the languages are dead because of the governments practices. If you’re going to teach, you need the boys to learn the government’s abuses. If young native children (0-17) do, even today, suffer white privilege abuse, boys of the same age must learn about it.

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Good Grief people! Pre-Columbian native tribal warfare recognizes the near universal parallels in certain violent practices, including captive taking (slavery), human sacrifice (ritualistic killing and cannibalism), and warfare as statecraft (warrior nations), occurred across the Western Hemisphere long before any Europeans ever appeared. In Central America, those tribes frequently warred against each other, often with such savagery, that the resulting horrific images of human heads as trophies, human organs being eaten, and human blood pouring down hundreds of sacrificial monument steps. In North America, those tribes frequently attacked their neighbors, raping and killing women and children (sometimes burning them alive), torturing and enslaving the survivors, and ransacking their villages. Yes, Columbus’s expedition brought foreign bacteria and viruses that killed many of the Taino and Arawak tribes, but it was far from annihilation. Yes, the US government broke nearly every “peace” treaty it ever signed with the American Indians. Much of history is ugly and disgusting, including – in this context – the tragic Trail of Tears. Unfortunately, many misguided people today judge history by their “standards” of today’s society. History must be studied – and learned from – based on the standards in place at the time. Regrettably, the famous quote by George Santayana – “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – still rings true today. We do not remember the past by trying to rewrite it! We cannot remember the past if we refuse to try and understand the societal mores of the day – to know their impacts – positive and negative – and where negative, to measure the appropriate changes to increasingly improve society.   And, fortunately, we’re not done! We are still learning and figuring ways to improve our world. By insisting that those past historic figures somehow understood today’s more refined and improved societal norms, and should have behaved accordingly during their times, rests in ignorance and spite. There are several spiteful comments herein – many arguing about the nomenclature for a Boy Scout merit badge called, “Indian Lore.”   Lore amounts to the written and spoken records passed from generation to generation. In many cases, Indian Lore is all we have remaining to remind us of the more rich aspects of our Native American cultures. Nowhere in the merit badge do you see anything about learning how savage and brutal these people were – long before being influenced by Euro-whites arrived. Conversely, this merit badge teaches the Scouts to build respect, even reverence for these often-noble people. Rather than praise the Scouts for striving to keep the lore of the American Indian relevant in the lives of today’s boys and girls, some of these spiteful people try to ridicule it. Well that’s just too bad for you! It’s you that will never get it, because of the blinders you have riveted to your temples! Goodbye now – love to all!

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