December 31, 2013

Florida high school stereotypes Indians

Video: Florida High School's Horrific Display of Cultural StupidityA video posted to YouTube on November 25, 2013, has been making the rounds and upsetting to some. In it the Baker County High School History Club in northern Florida is supposedly sharing Native American culture with pre-schoolers. But what happens in the video can only be described as a racially ignorant display.

It opens to one student reading how tribal men and women spend their time, then pans over to a group of white girls dressed in fringed dresses in front of a teepee.

They whoop when the men—white high-school boys wearing fake headdresses and “war paint”—return.

The pre-schoolers have also been dressed in construction paper headdresses and are then taught a “traditional dance.” The dance looks something like the chicken dance and includes music with lyrics like “turkey time” and “gobble gobble gobble jump.”

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