Educator PD: Drs. Sherry Johnson & Nadine Eastman- Addressing Racism Through the OSEU

Addressing Racism Through the OSEU - Dr. Sherry Johnson & Dr. Nadine Eastman Racism is still prevalent in South Dakota and some people visit us from other states and they say it's so bad there. And if the public schools and even some of the private schools would embrace the essential understandings and would embrace the idea of teaching a native history from their, even their local area, that perspective to their students, there wouldn't be so much racism here. It would start where the students. You know, racism is something that's given to a child from a parent. But if we start working with the children, eventually they'll be parents. And if they were more open and taught to be, have a more open perspective and see things from different views, then their children would be raised with a different perspective and then it wouldn't be so hard. Because sometimes it's hard for our students because they are looked at not all the time and not by everybody, but there's. We all have had occasions where we knew there was prejudice involved and racism involved, and we can't get rid of that until people learn more about why natives are different, why they do different things, why you know they're so connected to their family. Until people are taught things like that, we can't ever get rid of this racism. That's the undercurrent of South Dakota, especially in the communities near or on the reservations.