From: Matthew Richter, 1131 Iron Horse Rd. McPherson, KS, 67460

January 6, 2002

Mr. Jon Flint
Principal, LARNED HIGH SCHOOL
815 Corse Avenue
Larned, Kansas 67550-2496

Ph 316-285-2151 Fax 316-285-7148

Mr. Flint,

It is very disturbing to have to write this letter to you. In the recent past many news articles and public discussions, seminars, education forums, discussions on racial relations, multicultural programs, information and outreach efforts have been going into your community. The fact that these racist activities carried on at Larned High on the 5th of October occurred shows you do not respect, care for or regard Native American people as anything but savage bloodthirsty animals.

This is very regretful to find a public display of such violent and racially derogatory imagery and practice being promoted by your public school. You adults in charge of the environment in your school have managed to teach children that violent racial stereotypes about Indians is an entertainment event.

Because of this public mockery of the Native American people and this disgusting imagery, including the burning at the stake float that was paraded in your area for hours you have shown you do not deserve to be associated with anything that is Indian in any way what so ever.

To show how little you respect or care for racial relations you have totally disregarded an internal report that Larned Public Schools have a race prejudice problem that prevents student learning. This is a report you folks submitted to the accreditation team at the State Dept. of Education. You know you have a racism problem and then you allow this violent racial stereotype about Indian be paraded around the town of Larned and you allow a viciously racist street painting to remain on display for weeks in a public street.

Because of your school's admitted past history of racism and your failure to stop this bigotry, and because of the current status of your obviously racist and bigoted environment there is only one solution; stop using Indians as mascots. You folks don't have a clue how to handle it so you should stop it now.

This disgusting art work on a public street shows you do not know nor do you care to treat Native Americans as human beings. If this was a painting of Arabs or Muslims with some kind of instruments of killing and blood dripping and a public display driven up and down the public street depicting Arabs as burning their enemies at the stake the FBI and the Department of Justice would be over there to straighten you out to stop this. However, you folks are so obviously bigoted regarding Native Americans you see the Indian as a racial joke for your entertainment. You even displayed this stuff for people coming in from other towns to view.

Honestly, people think you folks have a major race problem when you show this kind of vicious racist and violent imagery about Native Americans. It is truly a disgrace you have put on your own community.

The sadness here is you are not respecting Indians but your town is making Indian history into a tourist attraction because of the nearby Fort Larned Historic Site. The truth is the site is a place which promotes the violence brought about by white folks. It is not the Indian who is violent, stole everything they could find, killed families and ran an ethnic purge, it is the white folks. Now you are teaching children that it is the Indian who is violent. You cannot continue to teach this to children in your schools, if you want to show who is the violent one show the vicious white people shooting and killing and teaching your kids to laugh about "BLOOD THE SCENT OF VICTORY!" make the violent white society into your mascots.

However, I think you must be very confused to encourage the idea of any kind of violence and associate it with racial or ethnic identity and then teach children that this stereotyping is acceptable. What you are doing is purchasing violence as a problem in your own schools. Especially when you have an admitted racism problem in your schools (see below).

There is a page of information on the world wide web. It is complete with photographs of the racist environment at Larned Public Schools. www.iwchildren.org/larned/larned.html is the url. The world is watching you and they do not like what they see.

We ask that you change your racist schools. You can start down this path by immediately changing your mascots. Larned should not be a racist place where children are taught violent images of Native Americans or any other ethnic group either.

QPA IDENTIFIED PROBLEM FOR LARNED KANSAS:

Caring for Self and Others:

Selection of Target Area -

Because of prejudice, bias, or discrimination the staff at Larned High School recognized that the students were unable to work effectively both independently and/or in groups. Improvement in this area was seen as a high priority for students at Larned High School and became one of the major target areas for the building. Through the results of parental, community, student surveys and teacher observations the staff started to develop interventions for these concerns.

The interventions proposed did not work and your report on them also shows this did not work earlier. Even the students did not agree that the racism was taken care of.

As you can see I am deeply disturbed about your schools and this environment of violent stereotypes and racism is not tolerable in any public school. I encourage you to communicate with me and get this problem straightened out immediately.

Sincerely,

Matthew Richter