The Cultural Vehicle

As an entity MAAIC has evolved through a vast network of intercultural communication. There had always been a desire in Wichita among local Indian and non-Indian leaders to find a vehicle to perpetuate the heritage of Native Americans - while at the same time provide the vital human assistance so necessary to Indians caught in that cultural void between reservation and urban life.

To credit one individual with the MAAIC concept is an errant determination because the genesis resulted more from a complex concerted effort among both Indian and non-Indian.

Wichita's Indian community has always had a strong sense of group identity. Even during the war years (1942-46), when so many nationalities and races converged upon Wichita's rapidly expanding aircraft plants, the Indian community held together.

Such names as John and Mae Woosipiti, Albert Lara, Lee Howzipta, Tom Cussins, Francis and Irene Stumblingbear, Herman Bear, John Tiger, they all promoted and participated in "gatherings" on an intertribal basis.

Many of these people remain active in today's Indian community. Their purpose, if only to promote identity and brotherhood within the Indian community, contributed heavily to a blossoming concept of MAAIC.

If you must have a "beginning" to satisfy the curious, then it must lie with the Indian Committee of the Wichita Council of Churches. It was their work that brought them to the realization that there was a need for an independent Indian Center. There was no specific "long-range plan" at first, only an evolving feeling.

"Through our work with the Council of Churches, we had developed an Indian Service Center, but because of our association with the parent organization, we couldn't do everything we wanted to," says Jay R. Hunter, MAAIC's first Executive Director and for 18 years the chairman of the Council of Churches' Indian Committee.

Specifically, the Indian Committee could not apply for federal funds and other service-oriented grants under the auspices of the Council of Churches.