Inappropriation: The Contested Legacy of Y-Indian Guides traces the 77-year history of a youth development program that, at its height, engaged over a half million participants annually. Beginning with idealistic origins, intending to soften the stereotypical stern father, Y-Indian Guides traced a complicated thread of American history, touching upon themes of family, race, class, and privilege. Y-Indian Guides was a father-son (and later parent-child) program established in 1926 by Harold Keltner, a YMCA Boys Work secretary from St. Louis, MO, and Joe Friday, a member of the Canadian Ojibwe First Peoples. Keltner and Friday harnessed white middle-class fascination with Native Americans into what became Y-Indian Guides.
This book highlights the very real and enduring bonds formed through play and an authentic appreciation of family. It also walks through the problematic nature of the program's methods. In the very process of seeking to admire and emulate Indigenous Peoples, Indian Guides participants often (as photographs show) created and publicly shared rituals, dances, costumes, and ways of speaking that misrepresented American Indians and reinforced harmful stereotypes. Ultimately, this history questions whether the ends can justify the means, and demonstrates the many ways American culture undermines and perpetuates harm upon its Indigenous communities.
