When Scott Meyer joined Juneau’s Troop 439 of the Boy Scouts of America in 2017, things were much different than they are today. “Back then, I was known as Jennifer and I identified as female,” Scott told us, noting that he was assigned biologically female at birth. “The Boy Scouts had just been sued, and they settled the lawsuit by ending their misogynistic ban on female scouts. One of the conditions of the settlement was that female scouts would get first dibs at troop leadership positions,” Scott continued. “To be honest, I never really considered anything about scouting to be fun, but joining up was a great way to get attention, so a few of us did. Under the terms of the settlement, they had to make me a troop leader, even though I skipped most of the meetings and ignored most of the rules,” he concluded.
Just a year after being installed as troop leader, things changed for the worse. “It got lame. It wasn’t cool or edgy anymore to be a girl Boy Scout. I could hear people joking about it and saying that it was just stupid. I felt hurt and lonely,” Scott lamented. “My own mother actually said it was dumb for me to be a Boy Scout, if I didn’t like scouting,” he concluded, wistfully.
Fortunately, Scott had access to a lifesaving mental wellness counselor who practiced outside the influence of his family members.
“Thank God, I met Sheila, my counselor,” Scott exclaimed. “As a minor-attracted lesbian, Sheila was able to help me explore my sexuality and identity in ways that nobody else had done,” he said. “Over that year, with her help, I was able to find both my attraction to women and my male identity, and once I did that, some parts of scouting became more interesting.” Scott refused to elaborate on Sheila’s counseling methods, citing both patient confidentiality and his affection for his counselor as his reasons for maintaining privacy.
On his 16th birthday, Scott announced his new identity to his family and friends. “It was tough. But once the cops told my parents that they would be arrested if they challenged me, they calmed down a bit,” Scott said. “I don’t expect them to understand my choice, but I do demand that they affirm it. Or else…,” he warned.
“That next year was great.” Sheila had encouraged Scott to become an Eagle Scout by his 18th birthday and had even promised to take a trip to Thailand with him as a reward. “I was burning through badges like nobody’s business,” Scott said. “I was on the way to Eagle Scout and I had everything mapped out,” he said.
But three months before he was due to earn his last badge, the plan starting falling apart.
“I got a letter from the lawyers,” Scott said. “It said that I was no longer eligible to be troop leader, meaning I wouldn’t be able to earn the leadership badge I need to be an Eagle Scout.”
It turned out that the same settlement agreement that brought Scott into the Boy Scouts and that advanced him into a leadership position, did so on the basis of gender identity, not biological sex. So, while Scott was “Jennifer” and identified as female he (she) was eligible for the fast track leadership role, but when she (he) identified as male, he (she) was no longer eligible or qualified. The letter informed him that another scout would take over. To make matters worse, the new troop leader was biological male who decided to identify as a female in order to get a leadership role.
“It is just me, or does that sound unfair and silly?” Scott asked. “Our new troop leader was there when I joined and so she does have a lot more experience than I do, but we’re right back where we started – with a biological male taking a leadership position from a biological female, all because of gender identity politics” Scott complained. “Are we really going to let people identify anyway they want, when it hurts women?” Scott wondered.
This was just the first legal blow in Scott’s fight for his Eagle Scout badge.
“Eagle Scouts have to do a special project to earn the badge. My social studies teacher did a unit on the Native boarding schools and all the mass graves from the colonizing genocide, and I thought it would be nice to raise money to buy flowers to put on the graves, so I got an Eagle Scout project approved to do it,” Scott said.
“I started a GoFundMe page to raise money, and in two weeks, It raised more than $4 million. That’s when I got the call from the FBI and IRS,” Scott said. “They said they were investigating me for wire fraud and tax evasion and they wanted to see what I was doing with the GoFundMe money. They kept accusing me of blowing the money on myself,” he finished
Scott referred us to his attorney, Drake Spencer, to address questions about the spending. “For his age, Scott handled the donations in a professional and charitable manner,” Spencer said. “He bought a boat big enough to carry a crowd of mourners out to the mass graves in comfort, along with full cargo of flowers. And stocking a 90 foot boat isn’t cheap,” Spencer said, before noting that Scott used the donations to buy an appropriate wardrobe, a jetboat and several ATV’s that will be needed to reach the remote grave sites, and a condo in Maui that Scott intended to serve as a retreat for the grieving relatives of the Native Alaskans interred in the boarding schools’ mass graves.
None of this satisfied the investigators. “They keep asking, asking and asking me, ‘where have you delivered flowers?” Scott decried. “The answer is ‘NOWHERE!’ because nobody can tell me where I can find a mass grave in Alaska! Or ANY grave!”
We too, were taken aback by this claim. After all, just recently KTOO published a story by Claire Stremple detailing the latest report by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs on the use of boarding schools by the federal government to abduct and forcibly assimilate native Alaskan children. Given the nearly 100 such boarding schools, surely there must be some mass graves in need of recognition. We were startled after reading the report to learn that not a single Alaskan native mass grave has been discovered that is associated with these orphanages and boarding schools. This required a closer look.
Rance Wisterham, distinguished professor of American History at Harvard University, minced no words in his criticism of the BIA and its report. “It’s not like a bunch of white supremacists scoured the land, looking for Indian kids to abduct,” he said. “You have to remember that these native cultures were essentially Stone Age cultures that found themselves being dominated by an advanced culture. History is full of such culture shocks. Consequently, a lot of native children found themselves orphaned or abandoned, and somebody had to step up to take care of them, didn’t they?” he asked rhetorically.
“If you look at the so-called ‘boarding schools,’ you well see that most of them were operated either as, or in association with, orphanages by private church groups. The kids that entered these facilities did so in almost every case because their families or tribes rejected them,” he claimed, without evidence. Sensing our doubts, Wisterham became defensive. “It’s not like white supremacists scoured the Alaskan country side to scoop up kids. Seriously, if your goal is ‘genocide,’ why would you round up a bunch of Presbyterian ladies and build a school to educate Native kids before you abuse, torture, kill and bury them?” he goaded evasively, with a smirk. “The nonsense doesn’t add up. Just look at the facts and strip away all the emotional speculation and conjecture, and you will see for yourself,” he concluded abruptly, before storming off in anger at our unwillingness to accept his false narrative.
Fortunately, we were able to meet with Susan Dean, a teaching assistant intern and graduate student at the University of Southeast Alaska’s Department of Alaskan Native Recognition, Retaliation and Remuneration, to get a better-informed perspective. “In my three months of experience in academia, I’ve seen many cases where these kind of old-fashioned attitudes get in the way of progress,” Dean explained. “There’s this simplistic idea among a lot of older teachers that ‘facts are facts’ and anybody can identify and use these facts to explain things or make a point. The problem with this antiquated methodology is that very often the facts don’t support the preferred narrative. So the better, modern approach is to let the people who control the preferred narrative identify and define the facts,” Dean related.
To that end, Dean said she strongly supports the establishment of a Truth Commission to identify the mass graves of the victims of Native Alaskan genocide. “Looking for facts will take forever, and might result in the failure of the narrative. What then?” she asked. “On the other hand, a Truth Commission just requires the right members and a majority vote. If you start with the narrative that there are hundreds of mass graves, it is a lot easier to support that notion with truths provided by the Truth Commission than by actually searching for the graves,” she finished.
Ed A’V’aTa’m”PA Reese, Chief of the Lower Drowning Creek band of the Upper Gluck Gluck tribe, echoed Dean’s call for the establishment of the Truth Commission to quickly identify mass graves. “We’re talking about millions in reparations and restitution,” he exclaimed. “If we have to actually find the mass graves, we’ll never see the money,” he said. Several native villages struggle with slow internet in primetime and Chief Reese hopes to use the money to improve broadband links. “You ask any Native kid about the biggest problems in the community and they will tell you two things: buffering and throttling. We’re like a second-class society during the finale of The Bachelor,” Reese said.
Of course, none of this comes in time to help Scott Meyer earn his way to becoming an Eagle Scout. “I completed the Feminine Hygiene badge – I was one of first boys to get one – but without my leadership badge or without completing a special project, I’m stuck,” he lamented. “I’m thinking about identifying as a girl again so that I can get the leadership badge,” he continued, “and I’m also thinking about changing my special project over to something that’s easier to prove, like global warming. But I’m not giving up until the end of summer. I’m taking the yacht on a grave-searching mission along the coast for a couple of weeks and if we can’t find any graves, we’ll ride down to Maui for a retreat and then figure out the next steps, assuming my lawyer can keep the feds off my back. With diesel prices up the way they are, I’ll need to hit up GoFundMe again, but you gotta do what you gotta do, if you want to succeed, right?” Scott posited with steadfast determination.