STAR School near Flagstaff was forced into lockdown for several hours last week after threatening comments were posted online.
Teachers, students and parents are still shaken.
A majority of the students at STAR School are Native American.
But during a school outing, students were videoed by a local right-wing influencer who posted it to TikTok claiming they were undocumented migrants.
Comments on the video appeared to threaten gun violence against the students, and it raised safety concerns within the school community. Comments have since been turned off on the post.
Diné language and culture teacher Pauline Young is a member of the Navajo Nation and sits on the school’s board.
She says she’s worked to reassure parents and students that the school is safe.
“We are going to bend over backward to make sure the students feel aware that we are taking this very, very seriously. I am a mom. I am a grandmother myself, and it's weighing heavily on me. I mean, I lost sleep over this,” Young says.
Young says, for many parents, the incident triggered all too recent memories of discrimination and suppression of their Native cultures.
“[Parents] may have experienced this as younger people. And we were hoping, as we moved into more modern times, that acceptance is starting to be a little bit more prevalent," Young says. "We were teaching our fellow man about our culture, and a lot of it was met with a lot of understanding and acceptance. And now, with the climate as it is, it's like we're going backward. And that's what unnerves a lot of the parents.”
A spokesperson for the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office told KNAU they had increased patrols near STAR School and didn't believe the video or comments posed a serious threat.
The video remains online, but in a second post, the woman claimed she didn’t realize she lived so close to tribal lands.
The school is just over two miles from the border of the Navajo Nation.
She said misidentifying the students was an “innocent mistake.”
