Parents seek apology for school lockdown and being labeled ‘a disturbance’ – Winnipeg

Karmen Omeasoo, a.k.a. Hellnback, and his wife Lisa Muswagon are award-winning First Nations musicians, prominent TikTokers and well-known advocates for social justice.

When they went to their youngest daughters’ elementary school with unresolved concerns around bullying and supervision, they thought they’d be heard.

Instead, they found themselves alone in the office at Winnipeg’s King Edward Community School with their daughters while the school was put on lockdown and adminstrative staff locked themselves in a room while awaiting police.

“We’re still processing what happened,” Muswagon told Global News of the March 7 incident, which was livestreamed on social media and has been viewed more than 100,000 times and shared across Canada.

A letter from the school to parents said the lockdown was initiated because “community members known to the school were escalated in the school office and created a disturbance” — a characterization Muswagon and Omeasoo dispute.

“I was upset, yeah, but I wasn’t yelling, I did not raise my hands, I did not show any kind of physical threat or anything,” Muswagon said. “To be labelled as a disturbance and not even a parent of (children) that go to the school — but as ‘known community members’ … we just need to have discussions at the table.”

Winnipeg School Division told Global News it’s dealing with the issue privately with the family. The couple, though, say that public school administrators perpetuating a stereotype that Indigenous people are violent is not a private matter and they want a public apology.

Sean Carleton, a University of Manitoba professor and historian of education says racist in education didn’t end with residential schools.

“We need to remember that public schools are also part of the colonial project and are not equal and safe spaces, especially for Indigenous children, often,” he says, and for parents as “there’s a long history of the use of dehumanizing stereotypes – racist stereotypes –  in colonial society as a way of depicting all Indigenous people as violent and aggressive as a way of delegitimizing legitimate concerns.”

It’s particularly harmful at an inner-city school where half the population is Indigenous.

“Modeling a good space for Indigenous students means that some of them might want to get involved in the education world and contribute positively that way, rather than see education as a toxic space.”

Omeasoo and Muswagon say their concerns about bullying and lack of supervision in the schoolyard remain unaddressed.

“We’ve been ignored and it’s just time that we need to make change and do better,” Muswagon says.

The school division won’t say if an apology will happen.

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