Trump’s Mocking Drives Anti-Native Racism

As we continue to look at the video that has gone viral showing a group of Catholic high school students apparently mocking an indigenous tribal elder near the Lincoln Memorial, we speak to Chase Iron Eyes, an activist and lead attorney for the Lakota People’s Law Project. He is a spokesperson for the Indigenous Peoples March.

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in Los Angeles, with Juan González in New York.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We continue to look at the video that has gone viral showing a group of Catholic high school students apparently mocking an indigenous tribal leader near the Lincoln Memorial. The students, many of whom were wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, had just attended the March for Life. Omaha elder Nathan Phillips was attending the Indigenous Peoples March.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Chase Iron Eyes, an activist, lead attorney for the Lakota People’s Law Project, spokesperson for the Indigenous Peoples March.

Thank you for joining us from South Dakota. You just came back from Washington, DC, Chase. You were there. I mean, this was the end of the march, well after, but you witnessed what took place. Now the world has seen the video. And some have said, well, this whole story changed once the young man in the video, who is smiling in front of Omaha elder Nathan Phillips — once he issued a statement saying that he was not hostile, he was trying to defuse the situation. Chase, can you describe what you watched, where you were standing?

CHASE IRON EYES: Yes. Thank you for covering this, again, and thank you, for Nathan, for offering his song today and on Friday, right after the Indigenous Peoples March, the first inaugural.

I’m not quite sure what time it was when the whole incident went down, because we had finished our march early. And we had a permit to be there at the Lincoln…

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