When the fog lifts, and the threats cease, and the wounds are no longer raw, I hope you learn the lessons you’ve been given from the painful, real-life experiences that are always our best teachers. Please don’t stop at the obvious one, the one so many adults are stuck on: “the media sucks”. Does it? Sometimes. That’s not new and it’s not news. We interpret what we see, and when it’s harsh, instantaneously. Should the media witness the whole truth before reacting to it? Yes. Do they always? No. Do we? No. Should we? Yes.  That’s the simple lesson.

The other simple one– I’m sure you’ve been told a hundred times – we live in a world where everything is recorded.  Permanently. It wasn’t that way for us. What we wrote could be burned, we posed for photographs, our actions were part of our own conscience. In the world of cell phones and social media – everything has the potential to not only be public, but viral. Students are usually so excited to see themselves in the news, but that’s not the case with you, nor the case of the students in Parkland. Now you’ve been under the glare of the national spotlight, and your perspective has necessarily changed.

You’ve probably also realized that you’re free to wear whatever you want in America, as long as you’re willing to accept that there might be consequences to your choices– as benign as being ignored by people who might otherwise get to know you, or as severe as violence. And if you didn’t already understand how divided our nation is, you do now.

But some of the greatest lessons of your life are encased in this moment of national attention. In the next few weeks, please ask yourselves:  What did it feel like when a group of strangers hurled racial slurs at us? How did it feel when we heard them hurl racial slurs at Native Americans? Was it the same feeling? Or different?  Is there another way we might have responded to the hostility? How about to the Native Americans? What did it feel like to come so close to a language and culture we did not understand? How did we feel when we found out Mr. Phillips, a veteran, was praying? What were we thinking when we made gestures that at least looked like tomahawk chops? When it at least looked like we were mocking the drum?  Now that we can see the incident through the camera lens– what does it look like from the Native perspective? Dig deep.

Now’s the time to view news clips of the Little Rock Nine. You’ve experienced, hopefully for only this one moment in your life, what it feels like to have a hostile group shout racial slurs at you – fortunately not rocks, bricks or acid – because of your “otherness”. For a moment in time you experienced that irrational hatred, and perhaps that fear. You “walked in someone else’s shoes”. Sort of. Watch the way those students responded with your new found understanding of public bigotry and public scrutiny. And keep in mind — like fasting for a day to understand hunger — you knew you would not have to wake up the next morning, and the next and the next and the next, and face that crowd on your way to school.

It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that this incident occurred on the eve of Martin Luther King Day, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Search through his speech and find words for our times. Mr. Phillips said, “I have faith that human beings can use a moment like this to find a way to gain understanding from one another.” While you return to your prayers, and the Native Americans drum theirs, I pray that you and your generation learn all the valuable lessons – the good lessons, the life lessons – there are to glean from this, and from the world we find ourselves living in now.

Juan Arriola, Apache, Yaqui