The mother of a teenager accused of mocking Native Americans in Washington is clapping back and says her son was provoked by indigenous protesters.
The teen was caught on video mocking and taunting a Native American elder drumming.
The Indigenous Peoples March in Washington on Friday coincided with the March for Life, which drew thousands of anti-abortion protesters, including a group from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills.
The students were captured on video that went viral, mocking and confronting indigenous activists and surrounding and intimidating an indigenous elder who was drumming.
Indigneous activists called the behaviour of the teens shameful and say it is a demonstration of how youth growing up in an environment of bigotry contributes to dividing the country.

An Ontario legislator and Thunder Bay police are asking the province for additional funding to implement recommendations in a report that found systemic racism within the police service.
Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Judith Monteith-Farrell sent an open letter to Community Safety Minister Sylvia Jones on Friday, asking the province to provide more than $1 million for the police force to create a major case unit and improve training for its officers.
The request comes after the Office of the Independent Police Review Director released a report last month making 44 recommendations regarding issues between the police force and the city’s Indigenous community.
The review found that police investigations into the deaths of nine Indigenous people were so problematic that they should be reinvestigated.

Two women in Manitoba that were arrested and charged for hate crimes after posting racist and violent Facebook comments towards indigneous people are being held accountable for their words.
The pair are going through a mediation circle in the province rather than through the court system.
As part of proceedings the women were asked to read their online comments out loud.
suggested an organized “24 hour purge” of shooting indigenous people from the province.
The sentencing circle was established with 26 of Manitobas northern First Nations communities.

Canada’s Indian Act still discriminates against Indigenous women when it comes to passing on their status to their descendants.
This from the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
The committee found the act violates Canada’s international obligations and urged Ottawa to put an end to the differential treatment of an estimated 270,000 women and their descendants.
The federal government says it changed the Indian Act in 1985 to address the overt gender discrimination. However the changes continued the “existing preference for male Indians and patrilineal descent.”
The federal government told the committee that it made changes to the Indian Act in both 2011 and again via Bill S-3 in 2017.

A ruling is expected today in the case of a white man who killed an indigenous woman in Thunder Bay after throwing a trailer hitch at her from a moving car.
Brayden Bushby was arrested and charged with aggravated assault in February 2017 after the incident.
The victim, Barbara Kentner, died in July 2017 as a result of the injuries she sustained in that assault.
Police upgraded Bushby’s charges to second degree murder after Kentner’s death.
The trial was heard over a week in September 2018.
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