School administrators in Kansas this September violated an eight-year old Native American boy’s cultural and religious freedoms when they required him to cut his long hair to conform to school policy, according to the Kansas American Civil Liberties Union Foundation (ACLU). The boy, a member of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma, had been growing his hair for more than a year after seeing tribal men wear their hair long at the Nation’s annual gathering of the Little Turtles, according to the letter the ACLU sent Girard School District administrators on November 17.
Andreas Garcia, seven, shed tears after two of his first-grade classmates at Del City Elementary cut off his long, traditional Native American hair while their teacher was too distracted on her laptop last week.