Transcript for Outrage over viral video of encounter between teens and Native Americans
Now to the outrage over a video showing an encounter between teenagers and a native American veteran near the Lincoln memorial. This video sparking heated social media debates with criticism on both sides. ABC’s erielle reshef joins us with that story. Good morning. Reporter: Good morning to you guys. This morning, new questions about the troubling incident at the foot of the Lincoln memorial. A school investigating and promising action as some of those involved call for unity. New fallout and confusion this morning after this upsetting incident now going viral. A group of teenagers, some catholic high school students, seen wearing make America great again hats, appearing to face off with Nathan Phillips, a 65-year-old native American, as he pounds his drum near the Lincoln memorial during an indigenous peoples March. I heard them saying, build that wall. Build that wall. No. This is indigenous lands. We’re not supposed to have walls here. We never did. Reporter: Videos of the encounter shared widely on social media. Swift backlash against the behavior of those Kentucky teens who traveled to Washington this past Friday on a school trip to attend the March for life. The diocese of this high school where some of the boys aattend, condemning their actions saying in a statement, this behavior is a posed to the church’s teachings of dignity and respect. The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action up to and including expulsion. Overnight, seeing just how this began. Appearing to show Phillips approaching the crowd of boys as they chant their school letters. ABC news has tried to identify and contact the students in the video. The parent of a boy who says he was there and wants to remain anonymous sent us a statement saying in part, an indigenous American man with a few other men approached the center of the boys and in particular one boy. The boy from my school didn’t say anything or move. He just stood there. As time went on, the man with the drum got closer to his after a couple of minutes, the man standing there beating the drum in the boy’s face, he walked away. But on this martin Luther king weekend, the youngest daughter of the civil rights icon tweeting, this is ugly, America. Truth, education and correctiv action matter. This is a teachable moment. I wish I could see the young men put that energy into making this country really, really great. ?????? It’s not clear if all the young people involved were students. One native American man that was there thought this could spiral out of control and this would be a mob mentality, but some students joined the native American men and women singing there, and it ended up defusing peacefully. That’s what we don’t see in some of the video. More complicated than it appears. Definitely and that’s a little bit of reassurance. Thank you, erielle. Appreciate it.
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