“This is absolutely appalling and she needs to be fired”
(Picture: Instagram)A teacher from California has been put on blast after her tasteless lesson plan resorted to wearing Native American headgear and her interpretation of a ‘tomahawk chop.’
The offensive, and not to mention painfully awkward, clips shared to Akalei Brown’s Instagram page (@corn_maiden_designs) appeared to show teacher Candace Reed of John W. North High School, mocking Native American culture.
According to several reports, a Native American student was prompted to record Reed during his math class after he “felt that violence was being committed against him and he had the right to record.”
Reed pulled out “a fake feather headdress” before performing “war hooping & tomahawk chopping” around the classroom. The students were mostly silent and appeared incredibly uncomfortable throughout (likely through second-hand embarrassment). One user commented: “How can she not even read the room?”
The footage showed Reed acting out a chopping motion while chanting “SohCahToa”.
While “SohCahToa” can be used as a mnemonic device to remember the mathematical concepts of sine, cosine, and tangent, people were still left baffled as to why she felt obliged to mock Native Americans American culture in the process.
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In the following three clips, she continued with a demeaning dance which she takes to the tabletops at the back of the classroom – again, shouting “SohCahToa” throughout.
She then introduced a war chant before stubbing her “toa” in a bizarre turn of events. In another part of the footage, she raised both her hands to the “water goddess” to ask for “the secret Indian chant.”
The teacher eventually burst out laughing and called the whole scene “ridiculous.”
The footage caused a widespread uproar on social media after people could not believe that 2021 still had this level of appropriation.
“This is absolutely appalling and she needs to be fired”, one said, while another couldn’t “believe what I’m seeing.”
“I will be writing a letter tonight,” another raged user wrote. “This was so disappointing to watch and cringe-inducing and so sickening.”
“Wow! In 2021 we STILL have this ignorant behaviour and the fact that they see NO WRONG doing in this,” one added.
indy100 has reached out to John W. North High School for comment.
