Order of Angell
[3][4] In the academic year 1900-1901, 15 students in a philosophy course taught by Professor Robert Mark Wenley formed the Hot Air Club, a social group that soon declared itself a formal society of seniors that would take, as a founder put it, "an Indian tribe as the means of expression and the name Michigamua."
These included members of the governing board of regents; four presidents of the university (Harry Burns Hutchins, Alexander Grant Ruthven, Harlan Hatcher and Robben W. Fleming); and the varsity football coaches Fielding H. Yost, Fritz Crisler and Bo Schembechler.
The earliest legal complaint came in 1972 from a chapter of American Indians Unlimited (AIU) led by Victoria Barner, a Michigan graduate student and member of the Nisga'a tribe of British Columbia.
HEW also noted that Michigamua was widely understood to be an honorary society, not a social fraternity, so it was subject to Title IX's ban on gender discrimination.
Pego asserted that Michigamua — and thus the university, by supporting it— was violating an amendment to the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 "by denying membership to minorities and ridiculing Native American culture."
[22] Younger members were more likely to say that critics were mistaking Michigamua's practices as commentary on actual Native Americans, when in fact the "tribe" had crafted a subculture of its own out of pop-culture Indian caricatures.
The greatest change came in 1999 when, under pressure from university officials who had rethought Title IX's applicability to single-sex student organizations, Michigamua admitted its first women members.
On February 6, 2000, some 20 members of a new group, the Students of Color Coalition (SCC), gained access to the "wigwam" and announced they would stay until the university ejected Michigamua from the campus.
Protesters extracted Native American artifacts — some authentic, some faux-Indian souvenirs — from a storage space in the "wigwam" and displayed them on Michigamua's meeting table, then invited people in to view the materials.
After a report of the occupation appeared in the New York Times, the civil-rights activist Al Sharpton announced plans to visit Ann Arbor to support the protesters.
[32] Spokesmen for Michigamua responded to the occupation by saying the current cadre of members wanted to fully understand the protesters' grievances and remedy past wrongs.
Joe Reilly, a Michigan senior, Native American activist, and spokesman for the protesters, said Michigamua had forfeited its credibility by breaking past promises and dragging its heels in making changes.
[36] Soon afterward, members voted to change the organization's name to "Michigamua: New Traditions for a New Millenium" and offered to renovate the "wigwam" to remove all native references.
Other members included the woman president of the Michigan Student Assembly; the leader of Army ROTC; and the co-captain of the men's varsity football team.
Participants included three presidents of the university; Michigan's governor; varsity football coaches; and leaders of businesses, community-welfare organizations, and arts groups.
The email read in part: "Dealing with being labeled as racists on social media, the internal push for further reforms, and the inability to engage in oral and in-person traditions have eroded confidence in selecting another Pride.
Since the reorganization of 2006, they said, the Order had failed to "engage in truth, reconciliation, or healing" or "address the deep, systemic fibers of white supremacy that form the foundation of the organization...
But the group's "historical lack of transparency and sufficient action" made it impossible to carry out its "core mission to make the Michigan campus a better place for students."
The letter concluded: "In the strongest terms possible, we condemn any attempts to keep the organization alive in secret, restart the group, or build a new one that seeks to erase the history of the Order of Angell.
The colonists who posed as Mohawks in the Boston Tea Party of 1773 are only the best remembered of many Americans of the colonial and early national eras who rebelled against authority in Indian costume.
Members found community and camaraderie in gatherings that partook of secret rituals, names, hierarchies and costumes drawn from European-American depictions of Native American life — all elements that would characterize Michigamua from its origins until the late 20th century.
[54] Many such writings embraced the white image of Native Americans as "noble savages" living in harmony with nature and representing the inherent goodness of human beings untainted by European-American civilization.
Junior men chosen as new members —"young bucks" — would be summoned to a central spot on the campus where the senior members — "fighting braves" — wearing faux-Indian costumes, with their skin stained red, would tie initiates' wrists to a long rope, then run them through the campus and subject them to physical ordeals, including being doused with water and smeared with red brick dust.
The smearing of red brick dust on the skin of initiates — an example of "redface" practices, which are widely castigated by Native Americans and others as the equivalent of demeaning "blackface" caricatures of Africans and African-Americans — continued into the post-World War II era.
In the early 1930s, with the backing of Fielding Yost, then the university's powerful athletic director, the Union's officers granted Michigamua the right, at its own expense, to decorate its room for its exclusive use.
Decorations included curved birchbark coverings on the walls to simulate the interior shape and textures of a stereotypical wigwam as well as "relics and tokens of the race of redskins from whom the founders of Michigan's Tribe took their inspiration," according to the student newspaper, along with animal pelts and plaques inscribed with names of past members.
Apart from Rope Day, Michigamua's activities consisted of weekly meetings to discuss campus affairs; outings and parties with dates; and reunions with alumni members, called "Old Braves.
"[61] By informal understanding, the group refrained from any effort, as a body, to exert influence on student politics or university policies, though members often claimed to advance worthy aims as individuals working behind the scenes.
[62] The main exception to that reluctance to act as a group occurred in 1903-04 when Michigamua supported plans for a unifying social club for all Michigan men — students, faculty, and alumni alike — partly in response to tensions between undergraduate fraternity members and "independents".
By 1908, an observer reported the group "aims to draw its members, quite in the manner of the Yale senior societies, from the leaders in all prominent undergraduate activities, studious, social and athletic.
