Parents from the Onondaga Nation are demanding the Lafayette Central School District take action against a teacher following a racially-charged comment the teacher allegedly made toward a student.
About a dozen members of the Onondaga Nation attended a Lafayette school board meeting Wednesday night to voice concerns.
The incident occurred on Friday, Sept. 29, when a Lafayette Jr/Sr High School history teacher allegedly made a racist comment to an eighth-grade student from the Onondaga Nation.
Jeremy Belfield, LCSD superintendent, addressed the incident in a letter on the school’s website three days later.
In the letter, Belfield acknowledged that the teacher made a comment referencing Native American boarding schools, and said while it was “insensitive,” it wasn’t “made intentionally.”
Residential boarding schools across North America forcibly assimilated Native American children for more than a century in a system now widely regarded as racist, dehumanizing, and in many cases, deadly.
The teacher has since been placed on leave and an investigation is ongoing.
Trudy Shenandoah, Onondaga Nation Snipe Clan Mother, said that Onondaga Nation council leaders told Belfield privately that they don’t want the teacher back in the classroom.
“It’s all across Indian Country now,” Shenandoah said. “This whole issue right now. There’s a lot of people upset … It’s a really hard thing to just dismiss.”
At the school board meeting Wednesday night, the Haudenosaunee speakers made some demands, including that LCSD make cultural and racial justice training mandatory for all students and staff.
Randi Edwards, a member of the Onondaga Nation, Lafayette High School graduate, and aunt of the student who was allegedly harassed, was first to speak. Reading from a prepared statement, she rejected Belfield’s characterization of the teacher’s comment as unintentional.
According to Edwards, the teacher told her niece to “sit the way you would sit in a boarding…
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