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| Miranda Washinawatok, 12, is a student at Sacred Heart Catholic Academy. |
After a 12 year-old Menominee girl called Miranda spoke her native language in class, she was suspended from playing the night's basketball.
Miranda Washinawatok attends Sacred Heart Catholic Academy in Shawano, Wisconsin. According to Native News Network, the school is more than 60 percent Native American and is about six miles from the Menominee Indian Tribe Reservation.
On January 19, she was trying to teach a classmate how to say "posoh" and "ketapanen" when her teacher overheard and she got in trouble. The teacher told her she was not to speak like that because she didn't know if Miranda was saying something bad.
The words Miranda got in trouble for mean "hello" and "I love you" in the Menominee language.
“Miranda kept saying she was only told by her assistant coach she was being benched because two teachers said she had a bad attitude,” Tanaes Washinawatok, Miranda’s mother, told Native News Network. “I wanted to know what she did to make them say she had a bad attitude.” Miranda plays basketball and is the team captain of a volleyball team.
Miranda isn’t a troublemaker. Her mother told Native News that she is mature and respectful.
There is dispute over who actually did the suspending, but the school has admitted it “failed miserably in its handling of the matter.” Deacon Ray DuBois, the communication director for the Diocese of Green Bay, which operates the school, also told Native News Network that the school does not prohibit the use of any language and that “the number one priority is to help this girl.”
It's the year 2012 and this kind of events are still happening when no one should ever be forbidden or punished in any way for speaking their language.
by Lei Wah Mon
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