Syracuse.com
by Steve Featherstone
Parents from the Onondaga Nation are demanding the LaFayette Central School District take action against a teacher following a racially-charged comment the teacher allegedly made toward a student.
About a dozen members of the Onondaga Nation attended a LaFayette school board meeting Wednesday night to voice concerns.
The incident occurred on Friday, Sept. 29, when a LaFayette Jr/Sr High School history teacher allegedly made a racist comment to an eighth-grade student from the Onondaga Nation.
Jeremy Belfield, LCSD superintendent, addressed the incident in a letter on the school’s website three days later.
In the letter, Belfield acknowledged that the teacher made a comment referencing Native American boarding schools, and said while it was “insensitive,” it wasn’t “made intentionally.”
Residential boarding schools across North America forcibly assimilated Native American children for more than a century in a system now widely regarded as racist, dehumanizing, and in many cases, deadly.
The teacher has since been placed on leave and an investigation is ongoing.
Trudy Shenandoah, Onondaga Nation Snipe Clan Mother, said that Onondaga Nation council leaders told Belfield privately that they don’t want the teacher back in the classroom.
“It’s all across Indian Country now,” Shenandoah said. “This whole issue right now. There’s a lot of people upset … It’s a really hard thing to just dismiss.”
At the school board meeting Wednesday night, the Haudenosaunee speakers made some demands, including that LCSD make cultural and racial justice training mandatory for all students and staff.
Randi Edwards, a member of the Onondaga Nation, LaFayette High School graduate, and aunt of the student who was allegedly harassed, was first to speak. Reading from a prepared statement, she rejected Belfield’s characterization of the teacher’s comment as unintentional.
According to Edwards, the teacher told her niece to “sit the way you would sit in a boarding school.”
Edwards insisted that the teacher made a conscious choice to “weaponize his words to a 13-year-old girl” and to “inflict emotional trauma.”
Six other Haudenosaunee women also addressed the board, echoing Edwards’ statement in clear and often emotional testimony touching on the generational trauma that their families and communities continue to struggle with today.
“They’re still traumatized, they’re still tormented like it was yesterday,” said Kelly Edwards, Randi Edwards’ mother, and grandmother of the student at the center of the controversy.
Betty Lyons’ voice cracked when speaking about her 100-year-old grandmother, a boarding school survivor.
“We still live under that oppressive legacy and these genocidal institutions,” Lyons said. “Everyone one of us is a survivor.”
Loreen Printup said that the incident resurfaced painful memories of her own education.
“So what happened with this young girl means a lot to all of us,” she said.
Shenandoah alluded to past controversies at LHS involving Native American students who were subjected to “abuse” and “injustices” that were never resolved, and called for the school to institute a transparent process to address them.
“I think today for me would be a great day to start the healing process,” she said, “to make this day the first day of spiritual unity, to unify and go forward in a peaceful way and find wisdom.”
“We hear your voice, we hear your pain,” said school board president Ronald Shawn Reyburn, adding that he couldn’t comment on the incident.
“We take this matter very seriously,” Belfield said, “and we want to make sure we’re doing right by our students and our community.”
Randi Edwards said that her father, a boarding school survivor, had offered to speak about his experiences at the school but nothing ever came of it. He died this past July.
“We should be able to work together,” Edwards said, “and the fact that it’s so divided is a choice that they’re making. Our doors are open.”
“We’re always open to doing more to help educate our staff and our students about the rich Haudenosaunee culture traditions and some of the very sad incidents that have occurred throughout history to the Haudenosaunee people,” Belfield said.