During the 2011-2012 academic year, a math teacher at John W. North High School in Riverside, California told yearbook producers why she mocks Indigenous people as a way to teach trigonometry to her students.

"I find that if I tell them a story using math along the way, it's like a memory device!" said Candice Reed. "It just might stay with them forever."

Unfortunately, it worked.

Ms. Reed's mnemonic method of chanting "SohCahToa" while donning a fake headdress to mimick Indigenous ways of knowing became so normalized at JW North, it was celebrated.

In a devoted yearbook spread, outgoing students thanked their teacher for her unorthodoxed teaching next to a photo of Reed decked in offensive costumery.  Additional words described her as having "passion and purpose." 

This week, a near decade later, the educator has relied on her lesson for hopefully the last time thanks to a brave student who used his smartphone to anonymously record her racism in action.  It's since gone viral. 

In a series of spliced videos, the math teacher can be seen wearing a red headband spiked with paper replicas of feathers while gesturing the "tomahawk chop," an imitation of a violent war maneuver.  She then hops around her classroom chanting "SohCahToa"  while at least one student, seemingly bothered by the incident, hides his face in his hands and cowers over his desk.  Others also appear uncomfortable in the moment.

At one point, Ms. Reed perches atop her desk, closes her eyes and reaches her arms to the sky.  "Water Goddess," she says. "Please send me the secret Indian chant," then giggles about how ridiculous her scenario is playing out.  But it doesn't end there.  To finish the obscenities, she reaches for a collection of stones as a way to conjure up a "Rock God" that somehow completes her story of "SohCahToa."  

Out of respect for the reconciliation process, I'm not linking to the video; it's easily Googleable.  But I am linking to the Riverside Unified School  District (RUSD) Board of Education meeting from Thursday night. There, a young Indigenous girl named Meztli took to the mic, and at the end of her allotted two-minute remarks, received an audience-wide standing ovation.

"When I saw that video of [Reed], I felt like I was gonna explode," said Meztli who appeared no older than the age of nine, perhaps born the very year Ms. Reed was featured in that year book.  "Someone could have reported it long ago - that she was doing this for so long."

Standing against a backdrop of a flag displaying the red, gold, and white colors and logo for the American Indian Movement, the young student spoke of an Indigenous struggle that goes generations deep. 

"Me in my mind, I just say we have been treated so badly for so, so long - you can change things. You have the power to change it," she told the school board members. 

The day before, when the video was posted online and viewed millions of times, the RUSD issued a statement announcing Ms. Reed had been placed on leave pending an investigation.  At the school board meeting, though, nearly everyone who publicly commented was calling for the teacher's immediate termination. 

This is where the story has mostly ended by an established press that's struggled to call the incident what it is: racism.  (One commenter on social media came up with a more laughable word: bigotnometry.)

The most offensive framing suggests that Reed's buffoonery is somehow imitating "Native American dance" as if validating some kind of correlation.  There isn't one.  Our songs, dances, and regalia are beautiful and respected; they've survived genocide.  And they will guide us in this moment. 

It's also home to one of the most culturally-appropriated hotspots in America, Coachella, where wearing headdresses by hipsters got to be so bad, publications like Teen Vogue issued a sensitivity 101. 

But more than anything, Riverside County is like the rest of the country, wrestling with the polarizing effects of today's political realities.  Both in 2016 and 2020, voters were almost perfectly divided over Donald Trump who narrowly lost both elections by an average of five percentage points. 

In September, Riverside voters became the state's largest county to support ousting California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, with 50.5% of the vote.  Newsom easily survived the recall attempt, but conflict countywide remains. 

At the school district meeting, a masked-up Meztli finished her remarks by striking at the heart of  the acrimony: vaccine mandates being pushed on parents by Newsom. 

"We should all have masks in here," she said to board members as  parents opposed to inoculating their children held signs that read "Embrace Patriotism." But one sign loomed larger than all the others calling on Riverside County to stop colonizer behavior. 

I don't have much in the way of additional links this edition. I've been picking up the pieces of confronting my own bout with bigotry recently as I made my way through the heartland, last week.  Let's just say I got clued in on "Let's Go Brandon" and how conservative fragility is increasingly becoming impossible to escape.  

I'm back in Alaska now, reflecting on these sensitive times we're all living in and realizing more and more how it's not all black and white.  Most often, there are a many shades of gray.  But Candice Reed's teaching methods are not among them. 

"Thank you so much for the decolonizing newsletter. You make the world a better place!"

Lili, the Internet

Kind Lili wrote to me with the salutation, "Autumn Smiles." I loved it so much I'm wishing all of you the same. 🍁🤗🍂