Skiatook High School sophomore, Nettie Gray, received an assignment this week that left her and her family confused and upset. On Thursday evening, her mother Olivia Gray posted about the assignment on Facebook and hundreds of comments began to roll in.
The post read, “This is one of Nettie’s assignments for World History class. It’s being called a research paper. …” and included a photo of the assignment, which contained a series of ten questions about “how the world started” and urged students to write a research paper on the topic. Among the questions were “What does it mean to be a Christian?” “Is God real” and “Is satan [sic] real?”
Nettie, who her mother described as a “straight-A student,” brought the assignment to her because “She didn’t know how to answer the questions using [research] sources.”
Another of Gray’s daughters, Oli Ramirez, shared the assignment on X and the conversation continued to escalate.
Sen. Mary Boren, D-Norman, called Gray and urged her to take legal action. News stations kept Gray on the phone all day on Aug. 16, along with Nettie’s father, former Osage Nation Principal Chief Jim Gray.
The problem with the assignment, said Gray, is it has leading questions centering on Christianity. The issue also corresponds with State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ mandate that public schools must teach the Bible.
Osage Creation Story
According to the U.S. Constitution, public schools cannot center on one religion but must instead abide by the First Amendment, which protects students’ rights to freedom of religion.
According to its clan systems, the Osage Nation has several versions of a creation story. They tell the story of the Osage, or the Ni-U-Ko’n-Ska, Children of the Middle Waters, who came down from the stars at Wakanda’s request. The Osage float down and land in red oak trees to form three of four divisions of the Osage people, the water, land and sky. The three divisions of Osage wander the earth in search of the fourth division, called the Isolated Earth People. Once they find the fourth division, they become complete.
A Puma Clan version of the Osage creation story, by Osage artist Welana Queton, was made into a play by the Wahzhazhe Puppet Theatre and has been performed across the Midwest. The play will be performed in October at The Momentary, an extension of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. The larger-than-life puppets used for the play feature an enormous water bird, a giant elk who forms the land, water sprites who guide the young Osage on their journey, buffalo and wolves.
School unresponsive
Gray reflected, “If you are Jewish sitting in that class, if you are a Muslim student sitting in that class, how are you going to relate to being asked what Christianity means to you?”
The Skiatook parent described the last 18 hours as “chaos.” She doesn’t know yet if she’ll take action regarding the assignment. First, Gray said she would like to hear back from the school.
“The school is not answering the phone,” she said.
The homework assignment was posted on Aug. 15 at 10:43 a.m. but the assignment has since been taken down, said Ramirez.
According to the Oklahoma State Department of Education website, the teacher who assigned the paper was Erich Richter, a football coach at SHS who has his emergency certification in English that expired on June 30, 2024.
Prior to teaching, Richter ran for Tulsa County sheriff but was disqualified due to embezzling funds from Taco Bueno, according to The Frontier.
After processing the assignment and talking with her family, as well as the activist community online, Gray is upset.
“Nettie is descended from many people who were forced into [Boarding Schools]. Those are not safe questions for her. … My kid is going to learn about Wakanda and going out to pray at dawn and being Osage … [not forced to accept Christianity]. These are charged and leading questions, and I don’t like it.”
With additional reporting by Editor Shannon Shaw Duty.
