At the Lincoln Memorial

Now that the dust has nearly settled on the not-really-newsworthy encounter between Omaha elder Nathan Phillips and a group of Catholic high school boys from Kentucky the day before the annual global Women’s March on the steps in front of the Lincoln Memorial, I feel the need to share some of my lingering thoughts. In trying to sort out facts, emotions, media frenzy, social media meltdowns, and primetime TV interviews, I felt myself drawn down into the sewer of contemporary life in America.

My heart breaks for the clueless boys, probably seeing a Native American elder for the first time in their lives, and only having the sports culture of shouting, jeers and tomahawk chop gestures as a response.

I feel the pain of Nathan Phillips, who said he was trying to diffuse tensions between a small group of loud, obnoxious street preachers known as Black Hebrew Israelites and the high school boys, many of whom were wearing the notorious red caps with the Make American Great Again slogan. He approached with a powerful song and a drum and a friend drumming by his side, surrounded by others who lingered at the end of the Indigenous Peoples March. In an interview later that day, he said, “Those young people from that school, that song was a prayer for their future and my children’s future. We’re facing critical times and we’ve got to make choices, and they're going to be some hard choices.” 

When the initial video clip of Nathan Phillips’ singing went viral on social media, the Archdiocese of Covington and the Covington Catholic High School the boys attended issued a statement condemning the actions of the boys and apologizing to Nathan Phillips specifically and to Native Americans. As Twitter feeds filled with background on the school and its culture, many of the website’s pages were made private. (Out of curiosity I looked to see what the social studies education requirements were: Only 3 courses with no history requirement). Initial reporting on the incident intensified and the media shifted to alternative narratives of the event as longer videos emerged presumably exonerating the boys and their behavior.

An edited video collage with minimal voiceover was posted on January 23^rd by Barbara Marcolini and Natalie Reneau of the New York Times with a catchy subtitle of “here’s what happened.”  It ends with Nathan Phillips calling out to the crowd, “Relatives! Let’s make America great, let’s do that.” Edited out of a longer clip of that moment by Kaya Taitano (posted by Indian Country Today on Vimeo) is a boy with a Trump hat saying that land gets stolen throughout history, it’s the way of the world, “that’s how it works.”  An Indiana man, Jeff Neal, wrote his take on all of this after watching lots of video and posted it on Facebook.  By far my favorite commentary is by Cory Collins of Teaching Tolerance who argues for education that makes

visible power dynamics, unpacks intent and impact, and debunks false equivalences. He concludes, “Thinking critically about stories like this is a skill our students will need for the rest of their lives. Let’s help them develop it.” One great place to start is the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. The Native Knowledge 360 is a national initiative to promote improved teaching and learning about American Indians.

For me, in this maze of media commentary, there lingers a deeply troubling abyss between icons of old and new: a Native elder singing and drumming face to face with riled up teenage boys wearing MAGA hats. This encounter caused a flood of intense emotions, revealing fear, vulnerability, hatred, bias, and the hot mess of America’s broken culture. The shouting is deafening, the posts of vitriol unending. As it turns out the original Twitter account to post the video clip may have been fake (it has been closed by Twitter). Our enemies have figured out how to stir up muck, and weaken our resolve to make our democracy more than a failed experiment.

I know that there have always been tensions between youth and elders, and I am probably guilty of romanticizing the past and fearing a dystopic future as I get older myself. Yet as I think about the growing epidemic of elders with dementia and other profound caretaking needs, I wonder what will become of them. Will Americans continue to build fake towns to house their disabled elders, out of sight, out of mind? Will young people’s diminishing education and insatiable addiction to online multimedia mean they lose out on appreciating and learning from our collective history? I am haunted by Nathan Phillips and his repeated use of the word relatives to address the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial as he completed his song.