Who We Are
Our Mission
We seek to create a family friendly, fun-filled, environment that
fosters strong relationships and a love of nature.
Our History
Our program’s roots lay in the YMCA’s original Father and Son Y-Indian Guide Program which was developed to support the father's vital family role as teacher, counselor, and friend to his son.
Y-Indian Guides was first initiated in 1926 by co-founder Harold Keltner, St. Louis YMCA Director, with the help of his good friend and fellow co-founder, Joe Friday, an Ojibwe Native American and member of the Temagami First Nation in Lake Temagami, Ontario. Together they formulated the first Y-Indian Guide "tribe", spawning a program of parent-child experiences that would grow to involve a half-million children and adults at YMCA centers nationwide.
About Yomechas Federation
Yomechas Federation (pronounced Yo-ME-kez) was established in 1970 as the Y-Guides chapter serving Chicago’s Western Suburbs based out of the Indian Boundary YMCA of Downers Grove.
In September of 2010, Yomechas Federation officially disassociated from the YMCA and established itself as an independent 501c(3) not-for-profit organization, serving Downers Grove, Clarendon Hills, Hinsdale, Naperville and the surrounding villages.
Today Yomechas is an outdoor recreation-based family program that’s led entirely by volunteer parents who strive to honor the traditional Native American themed program that generations have come to know and love, while doing their best to respect the rich and varied cultures and traditions of indigenous peoples.
As we always have, Yomechas continues to promote community fellowship and provide a platform for families to discuss the history and experiences of Indigenous peoples with their children. And we proudly continue to capture the magic and intent of Keltner and Friday’s original idea: strengthening parent-child relationships through outdoor activities that allow parents to spend quality one-on-one time with their children.
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Purpose
The purpose of the Guides & Princesses Program is to foster the understanding and companionship between parent and child.
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Aims
1. To be clean in body and pure in heart.
2. To be Friends Forever with my father/mother/son/daughter/family.
3. To love the sacred circle of my family.
4. To listen while others speak.
5. To love my neighbor as myself.
6. To respect the traditions and beliefs of all people.
7. To seek and preserve the beauty of Our Creator's work in forest, field, and stream.
Program Cornerstones
The Origin Story
Joe Friday was a Canadian Ojibwe Indian born in the northern Canadian forest of Matagami in Ontario. For most of his youth, he was raised by his uncle, Chief White Bear, who devoted much of his time teaching Joe how to hunt and trap wild game. As an adult, Joe grew up to be a sportsman, a hunter, a trapper, and became a wilderness guide who interacted regularly with white hunters and fisherman, including his friend Harold Keltner of the YMCA.
Inspired by his experiences with Joe Friday as his hunting and fishing guide, Keltner conceived the idea of a father-son program shortly after a fateful discussion the two men had on an excursion together with friends in the Hudson Bay country.
Sharing stories around a blazing campfire one evening, Joe Friday said to Keltner and his white colleagues:
"The Indian father raises his son. He teaches his son to hunt, to track, to fish, to walk softly and silently in the forest, to know the meaning and purpose of life, and all he must know, while the white man allows the mother to raise his son."
From the Ojibwe viewpoint a father who did not have time for his son in the formative years, lost much of kinship with him later in life, he explained: “The two should grow up together as two boys and two men.”
These comments struck home and Keltner soon arranged for Joe Friday to work with him at the St. Louis YMCA. With Friday's help, Keltner studied the close companionship of Ojibwe boys and their fathers. He also hired Joe as an instructor for a new YMCA campground in the Ozark mountains, where he taught woodcraft and canoeing to families and gave lectures on Native American lore. After one such lecture, Friday was surrounded by so many fathers with hunting & fishing questions, that the little boys were unable to get close to "the Indian". This gave Keltner the idea of incorporating Native American lore as a common level of interest between fathers and sons in an outdoor program.
Soon after, the first Y-Indian Guide program was born, nearly a century ago, based upon the strong qualities of Native American culture and life – especially feeling for the earth and concern for the family. The program's goal was to strengthen father-son relationships by teaching outdoor survival skills and basic life skills.
Growth & Evolution
The Y-Indian Guides was recognized as a national YMCA program in 1935 and its swift expansion in turn nurtured the development of father-daughter tribes, called Y-Indian Princesses, emerging in 1954. And in the 1960s a co-ed Y-Trailblazers plan was recognized for older boys and their fathers while a separate co-ed program was developed for pre-K children and their parents.
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At it's peak in the in 1960s the YMCA's parent-child programs, under the umbrella title Y-Guides, had grown to include over 30,000 tribes across nearly 900 YMCAs from coast to coast, all providing structured opportunities for fellowship and nature based community-building activities including camping, fishing, hiking, canoeing, craft-making and community service.​​
​While the original version of Y-Indian Guides was meant to educate families about indigenous cultures, the program’s Native American elements began to phase out throughout the ’70s to early 2000s. For nearly seven decades it remained a national program until the YMCA decided to eliminate its controversial Indian name and theme in 2001.
The original father-son program — rebranded in 2003 as “Y-Adventure Guides” — has today almost disappeared, eclipsed by the father-daughter Y-Princesses Program (originally called “Y-Indian Princesses”) which remains relatively popular in some pockets of the country. Y-Guides was already subsiding prior to the rebrand as American culture shifted and families found infinite other ways to spend time together.
After the national rebranding, some YMCA chapters chose to continue the Native American theme instead of adopting the “Y-Adventure Guides” program. Other chapters broke away from the YMCA to form independent not-for-profit groups, including Yomechas Federation, which officially disassociated from the YMCA in 2010 keeping the Native American theme intact.
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Today, we are led entirely by volunteer parents who strive to honor and respect the diverse history and culture of indigenous peoples while continuing to capture the magic and intent of Keltner and Friday’s original idea: strengthening father-child relationships through outdoor activities that allow dads to spend quality one-on-one time with their children.