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G_j

(40,367 posts)
Sat Oct 5, 2019, 03:28 PM Oct 2019

Clintonville Cancels Homecoming After Students Mock Native American Dance

https://madison365.com/clintonville-cancels-homecoming-after-students-mock-native-american-dance/

Clintonville High School has cancelled all activities for Friday night, including the Homecoming football game, after four non-Native students performed a mock Native American dance at a homecoming “dance-off” Thursday.

Clintonville, about 45 miles north of Oshkosh, is surrounded by Native American communities, including Ho-Chunk, Stockbridge Munsee, Menominee and Oneida people. Just over one percent of the district’s roughly 1,300 students is Native American, according to the state Department of Public Instruction data.


“From what I saw it looked like a complete mockery of our culture,” said Paul Roberts, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation who also works in social services for the Nation and lives near Clintonville. “We are really trying to revitalize not only our language but our culture. To have this nearby sets us back to when our culture was taken from us.”

Roberts said the mocking of traditional dance is especially offensive.

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“It saddens me that high school students from Clintonville, Wisconsin learn to act in such a careless manner,” said Ho-Chunk Nation President Marlon WhiteEagle in an email to Madison365. “Their inappropriate behavior is a direct reflection on their family, school, and community. It’s no surprise that cultural appropriation continues when we live in a society that promotes inaccurate history in its classrooms and marginalizes the indigenous people. It’s a complete irony that students mock native culture inside an educational institution.”


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DFW

(54,405 posts)
2. I'm European-American, and these people were here thousands of years before we arrived
Sat Oct 5, 2019, 03:43 PM
Oct 2019

"This land is your land" is a LOT more accurate than "this land is my land." No one is trying to change the history of the 19th century, but a little more respect for the survivors of the great invasion wouldn't hurt.

Igel

(35,320 posts)
3. And yet to say they've been "set back" is overreach.
Sat Oct 5, 2019, 04:11 PM
Oct 2019

Suddenly, because of 4 kids' insensitivity, all the various gains, personal and political, are revoked and they get to start all over?

1. There are faculty advisors for these things. What happened?

2. It's a dance off. These things typically require some sort of crowd support. A better approach would have been for all the "right thinking" people in the crowd to simply meet the dance with quiet disapproval.

3. I assume that nobody else was mocked during the dance off. Otherwise punishing one sort of mockery would be really inappropriate.

4. The punishment is exaggerated. Unless, of course, the kids weren't going to behave in accordance with correct policy and politics at the game, in which case by all means, it's appropriate. (When *are* these kids going to finally learn and grow up, instead of doing things that their clear superiors disapprove of?)

Sneederbunk

(14,291 posts)
4. When it comes to political correctness the administrators cannot be too careful.
Sat Oct 5, 2019, 04:32 PM
Oct 2019

Cancellation it is.

DFW

(54,405 posts)
7. I think their location is a factor
Sat Oct 5, 2019, 05:33 PM
Oct 2019

In downtown Manhattan or Chicago or L.A. it wouldn't ave mattered. With Native American communities surrounding the area and in immediate proximity, the impact changes.

bobbieinok

(12,858 posts)
6. Article indicates dance just postponed. Actions taken because fear of protestors at game, dance
Sat Oct 5, 2019, 04:58 PM
Oct 2019

So seems administration not concerned so much about what students may or may not be learning but about how Native Americans in area might react.

Doesn't seem like 'adults in charge' are open to learning anything from what happened!

Archae

(46,335 posts)
8. I posted about this earlier...
Sat Oct 5, 2019, 06:28 PM
Oct 2019

Those 4 boys are going to be the school pariahs from now on.

And they deserve to be.

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