Photo: Hunter Hooligan Instagram
The report also concluded the students did not “instigate the incident.”
Video of the Jan. 18 encounter that initially went viral on social media showedCovington Catholic High School junior Nick Sandmannstaring down atNathan Phillips, 63, a member of the Omaha tribe, as he played a drum and sang.
Phillips told PEOPLE he walked into the group of students after they began chanting back at a handful of Black Hebrew Israelites who were insulting the students and others.
Sandmann and some other boys surrounding Phillips were wearing red hats bearing President Donald Trump‘s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” Clips of the incident also showed students laughing in response to Phillips’ song and doing the tomahawk chop.
The investigative report, conducted at the behest of the Diocese of Covington, states that students performed the tomahawk chop “to the beat of Mr. Phillips’ drumming.”
The Lakota People’s Law Project dismissed this as “a total ignorance of — or, more likely, a willful refusal to acknowledge — the racist connotations of this action on the part of the Kentucky hometown investigative firm.”
Four licensed investigators spent 240 hours interviewing 43 students and chaperones on the trip and reviewed about 50 hours of “internet activity” on YouTube, Vimeo, major news networks, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
WhiletheWashington Postreportedthat an eyewitness heard some Covington students chant “build the wall,” investigators said they “found no evidence” of that.
Rev. Roger Foys, the bishop of Covington,said in a letter to parentsthat his “hope and expectation” that the inquiry “would ‘exonerate our students so that they can move forward with their lives’ has been realized.”
Investigators did not interview Phillips, whom they said they could not contact.
The Lakota People’s Law Project contended that investigators made a “half-hearted” attempt to reach Phillips — with whom the group has a relationship and could have facilitated contact — and that they did not interview other participants in the Indigenous Peoples March in January who had knowledge of the run-in with students.
Investigators said they traveled to Phillips’ home but he was not there. They also emailed his family.
While Sandmann was not interviewed in person, investigators said the teen’swritten statement of what happened after the incident“accurately reflect the facts.”
“Those videos provide incontrovertible evidence that Nick did nothing wrong and did not instigate the incident with Nathan Phillips,” he wrote, continuing:
“Nick did not approach Nathan Phillips … Phillips made no attempt to get around or avoid Nick. Nick did not verbally assault, taunt, mock, harass, disparage or threaten Phillips in any way.”
The report, Wood continued, “advances one of our goals for Nick — to correct the public record and firmly establish the truth that Nick was innocent of any wrongdoing. Nick was the victim of agenda-driven and biased adults who used him to further their own agendas both at the time of the incident and in the widespread false coverage concerning it.”
The investigators’ report addressed some of the students wearing red MAGA hats and noted most were bought after arriving in D.C. for an anti-abortion March for Life.
“We found no evidence of a school policy prohibiting political apparel on school-sponsored trips,” the report said.
The Lakota People’s Law Project blasted the investigators for “completely missing” the significance wearing MAGA hats has for Native Americans.
source: people.com
