Students mock Nathan Phillips.
Native American advocate Nathan Phillips of Ypsilanti tells the Detroit Free Press about a friightening confrontation Friday in Washington with a group of Catholic high school students from Kentucky, some of whom wore MAGA hats (Make America Great Again).
Philips, a 64-year-old Marine veteran of the Vietnam war, was participating in the Indigenous Peoples' March when he saw a confrontation brewing between the mostly white students attending a March For Life and a group of about four older people with a religious group known as the Black Hebrew Israelites. The white students, he said, were offended by what the black group said in public speeches, according to Freep reporter Niraj Warikoo. The black people also shouted harsh words at them.
"They were in the process of attacking these four black individuals," Phillip said. "I was there and I was witnessing all of this . . . As this kept on going on and escalating, it just got to a point where you do something or you walk away, you know? You see something that is wrong and you're faced with that choice of right or wrong."
He said he then got between the groups started playing the drum.
"When I took that drum and started singing, I placed myself in between these two factions of people. It wasn't a real conscious process, it was just what they call a spur of the moment."
The students then continued to mock him and the native American culture.
