Order of the Arrow cleanliness audit

Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) camp-service extension, Order of the Arrow (OA), has a fractured relationship with honor. BSA is tainted by OA’s 111 years of racist, redface¹minstrel shows. We use this phrase to broadly describe OA’s performances of a Native American tribe’s culture, or any other use of such culture, without a relationship with and written authorization of that tribe.²

OA recently began a half-hearted pivot from redface minstrel shows. It banned its national and territorial operations from some redface minstrel shows. It has also pledged to have council OA operations, called lodges and chapters, also stop their redface minstrel shows.

Councils with a “pass” rating have eliminated redface minstrel shows from their OA operations. Let’s see how well that is going:

Source data.

Clean councils

All these councils passed the audit:

How this is discerned

OA’s plan to distance itself from 111 years of racist cultural theft is incomplete. Rather than a pivot, it’s a wink-wink that lets councils keep their redface minstrel shows.³ For example, OA doesn’t bother to check for the validity of or even for the existence of councils’ tribal agreements⁴, which predictably leads fraudulent tribal agreements.

Our audit criteria requires a full cessation of redface minstrel shows. Any employment of indigenous culture must be limited to the culture of a willing tribe, formalized by that tribe entering into a written agreement with the council.⁵

Factors we audit for signs of a redface minstrel show:

• Lodge and chapter⁶ names
• Lodge flaps⁷
• Lodge and chapter totems
• References to parodies of tribal culture, like WWW⁸
• Imagery and words on lodge or chapter websites, social media, and other digital venues⁹
• Performances, like acts of OA’s children’s fantasy fiction (“The Legend”)¹⁰
• Any other signs of a redface minstrel show

When we see any sign of a redface minstrel show, we stop the audit and fail the council. As of May 2026, the vast majority of councils failed the audit because their names, or names of their chapters, use native words stolen from a tribe.

If no redface minstrel show is found, the council passes. This means no use of tribal culture, or if used, it must be the culture of a tribe with which the council has a valid tribal agreement. To be valid, the tribal agreement must meet all these criteria:

• Publicly posted on a council website¹¹
• Has a definite end date¹²
• Signed by a council Scout Executive¹³ and by a member of the tribe’s government, with roles or titles listed for each
• Only authorizes the council to use culture of the tribe that signed the agreement
• Conveys that the council is the responsible entity on BSA’s side (it’s fine to also name the lodge, but as lodges are again nothing more than operations of councils, only councils can sign this agreement)
• The tribe is in good standing¹⁴

Exception: the children’s fantasy fiction

OA is in a liminal space. It’s between when it announced replacing its children’s fantasy fiction and a final changeover date, which has been delayed a few times. While performances of the children’s fantasy fiction are redface minstrel shows, we will not penalize council for this until after OA’s final changeover date.

Because the children’s fantasy fiction is a redface minstrel show, it is unethical to use any tribal regalia during this ceremony, even with a tribal agreement. Councils may only use fully non-native costuming.

Limitation of Scope

This audit focuses on councils and their Order of the Arrow operations. Some councils have different forms of tribal mockery, like the (phony) Tribe of Mic-O-Say, which is worse than OA. At some point, we may expand the audit to include these additional forms of mockery.

Ask for a review

Want us to re-audit a council? Ask us!

Footnotes

1. Redface is similar to blackface, essentially when non-natives use tribal culture, real or phony, or caricatures of indigenous people in acts or for profit. ↩︎
2. As a non-indigenous corporation, the only ethical use of Native American tribal culture within BSA is that which is authorized by a tribe. ↩︎
3. As an example of its unwillingness to stop its endemic, racist cultural theft, OA still acts as if indigenous vocabularies are war trophies seized from conquered peoples: OA permits lodges and chapters to name themselves with thieved culture. ↩︎
4. Per OA’s AIA policy, councils must “attest to having an agreement or not annually”. This is not a verification, it’s just a field on a form. ↩︎
5. A council is a local, nonprofit corporation that is essentially franchised by the BSA national organization to deliver Scouting in an exclusive, geographic area. ↩︎
6. Chapters are subdivisions of a lodge. As they typically correspond to districts, chapters are typically district-level operations of a council that run under the OA brand. ↩︎
7. This refers to a patch that goes on the right pocket flap on the uniform. ↩︎
8. Per OA’s WWW Name history, “Wimachtendienk Wingolauchsik Witahemui”–what WWW refers to–is believed to be Lenape words. It’s unclear if these are real or parodies. ↩︎
9. A limited exception is offered for historical documentation of past practices that are clearly disclaimed as such and presented in proper context. ↩︎
10. OA’s legend is Western children’s fantasy fiction decorated with tribal culture OA thieved from the Delaware people (Lenape). The legend centers on a story from The Last of the Mohicans, a historical-romance fiction novel by James Fenimore Cooper. ↩︎
11. Echoing the cultural rot of BSA’s national organization, transparency and accountability aren’t important to OA. Given OA’s lengthy record of cultural theft and duplicitousness, a non-public tribal agreement is as good as no agreement. ↩︎
12. Per OA’s AIA Policy, tribal agreements must have a “set duration”. This excludes perpetual agreements. ↩︎
13. This assumes the Scout Executive is the only one authorized to execute contracts. We will provide due consideration when an employee with a different title signs an agreement. ↩︎
14. Some entities claiming to be tribes are disputed. For example, the three federally-recognized Cherokee tribes have collaborated to identify fraudulent Cherokee organizations, which includes some state-recognized Cherokee tribes. There are also disputed Lenape tribes. By forcing councils to pick sides in these disputes, BSA is entering tricky territory, just to sustain practices that have little to do with Scouting. ↩︎