In my article about ADHD, I promised to tell you the story behind the name one day. Promise kept — and yes, it is worth it. It starts last century, in the basement of a monastery, with a handful of slightly-too-energetic cubs. Including me.
Last century, in a somewhat rowdy pack
When I was a cub, it was common to borrow from Indigenous cultures. Totem names, calls, ceremonies done “Indian style”. It was done in good faith, with a lot of admiration, but let's be honest: a little clumsily. We did not ask ourselves many questions.
Our pack, for its part, mostly posed challenges. We were — how to put it — enthusiastic. Loud. Creative in our reading of scout decorum. So our Akela had an idea: a points system that would reward good behaviour and discourage lapses.
Gold, silver and bronze washers
The points were not numbers on a chart. They were objects. Real metal washers from the hardware store, painted gold, silver and bronze. A good deed? A washer. A generous gesture? A gold one, if you were lucky.
We hung them from our belts with shower-curtain hooks. Picture the sound of a whole pack running: you could hear us coming from the far end of the parking lot. And we were proud. A well-stocked belt was a walking résumé.
The leaders called them woumpoums.
The system worked surprisingly well. Its only flaw: the leaders had to walk around with a supply of little washers in their pockets. Picture Bagheera, in the middle of a night game, digging through pockets for a silver washer between a whistle, a flashlight and a granola-bar wrapper.
Thirty years later
Thirty years later, I went back to lead the same pack. And guess who was still leading there? My Bagheera from back then. Still there. I am not sure whether it is perseverance or stubbornness, but it is admirable.
The points still existed. The system had even spread to other packs. But the washers were gone: the points had gone virtual. In our pack, Baloo kept them in an Excel spreadsheet on a phone — yes, that spreadsheet, the one I already told you about, with its tiny cells and its small screen.
In another pack, it was even simpler: entirely subjective. Fifty points given here, ten taken away there, nothing written down, and at the end, rewards for whoever the leaders judged most deserving. With the best will in the world, but with no record of what had happened.
The vocabulary had evolved too. The longest-serving leaders still said “woumpoums”. The newer ones just said “points”. Two generations, two words, one idea.
The question that hooked me
When I started building my app, the question came up: where does that word actually come from? “Woumpoum” sounds great, but it means nothing. So I did what any programmer with ADHD does when a question hooks them: I spent a whole evening digging instead of coding.
The word comes from wampum, a term from the Algonquian languages. Wampum are beads cut from shells — white from whelk, purple from quahog clam — strung on cords or woven into belts. For several Indigenous peoples, including the Haudenosaunee and Algonquian nations, these objects carried immense value.
Part of that value lies in the effort they took: drilling and polishing each bead by hand took a long time. But above all, wampum carries memory. The patterns and colours of a belt recall stories, laws and alliances. The Two Row belt, for example, records an agreement made in 1613 between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch: two parallel paths, each in its own vessel, side by side and at peace. A wampum belt is not read like a document: it is recited, passed on and kept alive.
Our painted washers were a long way from all that. But as I read, I understood something our Akela may have sensed without knowing it: we were not only rewarding behaviour. We were keeping a record of who we were becoming.
Why I kept the name
The app I build — the fruit of my labour, assisted by artificial intelligence, I admit it freely — does exactly that. It gathers each young person's story and progress: attendance, badges, milestones, good deeds. And it is something shared: between the leaders who fill it in and the parents who read it, between the unit and the families.
And to be clear: the youth's information never goes through those AI tools. I build and test on fictional data.
A memory passed on. A link between two groups moving forward side by side.
It felt right to name it Wampums. In memory of our traditions — the washers, the shower-curtain hooks, Akela, Bagheera and everyone who held those packs together. And as a tribute to the Indigenous peoples who are our neighbours, from whom we borrowed so much as children without always understanding it. Here in the Outaouais, we lead on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
I do not claim this name repairs anything. But I would rather have a name that remembers where our words come from than one that forgets.
The irony, once again
Thirty years later, my Akela's points system fits in a phone. No more carrying a pocketful of washers: one tap, and the point is given, recorded, and visible to parents that same evening.
I will admit a little nostalgia, though. A belt that jingles had panache. If you ever find an old gold washer at the back of a drawer, keep it. That is a real woumpoum.
Wampums is free for a single unit until at least 2028. Request a demo, or explore the sample unit without signing up.