Former Osage Principal Chief Jim Gray and his wife Olivia Gray (Osage) recently took to Facebook to condemn their daughter’s world history assignment inquiring about the world’s beginning.
Late last week, Olivia Gray posted a picture of her daughter’s research paper guidelines on Facebook that has since been shared more than 400 times. The research question: “How did the world start?”
Her daughter Nettie Gray is Osage and a sophomore at Skiatook High School, which Olivia Gray noted is on the Osage Reservation.
Despite State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ mandate on teaching bibles in the classroom, Gray explained all of her children are entitled to their own beliefs, whether they align with Osage traditional teachings, atheism, Christianity or any other spiritual or religious ideology.
“They should make their own decisions about what they choose to believe in,” she said. “That's why we teach them to think critically, right?”
Nettie Gray is a straight A student, her mother said, and when she was assigned this research paper, she sought her mother’s advice about how to approach the project.
“At first, we were just doing the sarcastic Native humor thing,” Gray said. “And then Nettie was like, ‘How do I write this?’ And the more I started trying to break it down and talk to her about different ways she could write it, the more angry I was getting.”
On the assignment sheet, students were asked to answer the overall research question about how the world began. Students were also asked to ponder the following questions:
- How did the world start?
- Who started it?
- When did evil start or did it always exist?
- Are people inherently good or evil or neither?
- What is morality?
- What is religion?
- What is Christianity?
- What does it mean to be a Christian?
- Is God real?
- Is Satan real?
“I don't care what anyone says,” Gray said. “If you start out with, ‘How was the world started and then who started it,’ that implies it wasn't science [and] that it was an entity, a person, a being.”
Gray said since she made the Facebook post, Nettie’s world history teacher Erich Richter, who is a non-certified classroom adjust teacher, took down the assignment.
According to reporting from The Frontier, Richter was arrested in 2012 for charges related to illegally obtaining $20,000 from Taco Bueno.
Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. also commented on the issue, saying “My hope is that free exercise and anti-establishment principles embedded in the Oklahoma constitution win out over #OSDE’s absurd Bible mandate. Thousands of Cherokee kids attend Oklahoma public schools and they- and their classmates- deserve better.”
Gray’s daughter also posted the assignment on X, going viral with almost more than 80,000 likes.
Skiatook Public Schools has not returned a request for comment.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
