Hiawatha Seaway Council President Robert Berger announced on November 11th, 2009 the formation of an ad hoc Committee to coordinate the process of selecting a new name for our combined Boy Scout Council.
The committee will consist of five members representing, marketing, public relations, and communications; and will draw members from Cayuga County, the Syracuse Area, and the North Country.
The suggestion nomination process has ended. Stay tuned for more information!
Steve Austin reports:
the 2 finalists that the Executive Board is voting on now are:Longhouse Council and Adirondack Foothills Council. I will let you know what wins as soon as I hear.
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“Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think, and act for myself–and then I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.” – Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Tribe
I like the Adirondack Foothills name more than Longhouse Council.
Hi Bill-
I’m a little partial to Adirondack Foothills simply for heritage reasons (the Adirondack foothills area comprises is mostly the old Seaway Valley Council). Longhouse Council is remniscent of the old Onondaga Council. I don’t believe either name represents well the geography encompassed within the new boundaries but I’m guessing Central-Northern NY Council is a bit too generic. I heard a convincing rumor that the lodge will choose a new name and will be a native American translation of one of the two phrases (either “Deep Snow” or “Peace of the Deep Snow”). Again these are rumor from a credible source and indicates one of two possible totems:
*the Bobcat
or
*the Gougou
(I proposed this one several months ago and certainly ties into local lore dating back several centuries…for more on the Gougou, I’m including an article I dug up at the time I’d proposed it):
http://www.pressrepublican.com/homepage/local_story_108213458.html
I’d lamented since day #1 of Lodge 219 that having a wampum belt was no fun for a totem and I sought to lead a grass roots effort to switch the totem to a moose (which would have been the only lodge to currently have that totem) by designing two lodge issues with a moose on them. Immediately thereafter, Lodge #34 was chartered with the moose totem eliminating any hope (and my desire) that lodge leadership would change it (the desire to change the totem was not purely selfish…from day #1 of Lodge #219, we ran into problems with the leadership of the local tribe with the Hiawatha Belt totem being a copyrighted image and had to modify it to some degree in order to avoid trouble…which only further made it’s use sort of meaningless…it was this situation which led me to desire a totem we could anthropomorphize and have some fun with). Since I did not wish to have a totem done ad-nauseum by other lodges, I sought regional lore indicative of early settler experiences and discovered the Gougou. Time will tell if it is chosen.