Abstract
A Riverside, California, schoolteacher taught the mnemonic sohchatoa to her high school mathematics class in the fall of 2021. The lesson plan included “playing Indian,” with a headdress, tomahawk chopping, and war whooping. She was previously featured in several yearbooks and the school’s social media accounts wearing her headdress. Although her performance went viral and ultimately led to her dismissal, how do we account for the lesson plan and performance, given that it had been well accepted for years? In this article, we argue that settler mnemonics are beyond individual acts. They are the status quo. Settler mnemonics serve as memory devices that remind settlers of their nativeness, ensuring settler futurity. We argue that the performance illustrates a state of exception where standard rules, practices, and/or legalities are suspended. Despite mathematics’ supposed apolitical position in education, it is subject to discourse that reflects and recreates settler possession of Native people and their lands.
Teacher Candice Reed stood before her mathematics students at John W. North High School in Riverside, California, wearing a faux Native American headdress. Reed then mocked Native peoples by chanting and dancing around the classroom as part of her trigonometry lesson in the fall of 2021. She used her performance as pedagogy, supposedly teaching students angle functions through her chanted mnemonic, “soh-cah-toa, soh-cah-toa, soh-toa, soh-cah-toa, soh-cah-toa!”
The teacher’s staged performance and recitation of “settler mnemonics” was dramatic and spectacular (Bruyneel, 2016b). Holding imaginary tomahawks, mockingly singing, Reed performs “sohcahtoa” in redface. She jumps on the furniture, waves her arms through the air in exaltation, and stomps up and down the room, forcefully and menacingly moving through the classroom space until she crashes into a wall, loudly crying out that she hurt her “toa.” This last bit presumably sets up the punchline of the mnemonic. Not to leave out any aspect of the romanticized fantasy of “Indianness,” she caps it off with prayers to a “water goddess,” asking for a “secret Indian chant,” a mathematical formula, followed by an encounter with a “rock god” who gives her a set of beautiful rocks, whose role in the lesson is not clear.
While Reed took the lesson plan further than other teachers might, “playing Indian” is not an aberration, nor is the pedagogy she uses. Nevertheless, it was “obviously ridiculous,” as Reed states during her performance, acknowledging that her caricature and lesson plan were beyond normative mathematics pedagogy. Her performance was not her first time “playing Indian,” and the lesson plan, approved by school administrators, is widely used by teachers in mathematics classes across the USA. Through a made-up narrative that centers on Indians, Reed and many teachers use a lesson plan that relies on a mnemonic device, including the chant “sohcahtoa,” to help students remember the three trigonometric functions related to a right triangle: sine is the ratio of the length of the opposite side to the hypotenuse, cosine is the ratio of the adjacent to the hypotenuse, and tangent is the ratio of the opposite to the adjacent. Teaching the mnemonic does not have to include Indians at all. Alternative mnemonics include “Some of Her Children Are Having Trouble Over Algebra,” and one of the authors remembers learning “Some Old Hippie Caught Another Hippie Tripping On Acid.” Through a mnemonic that focuses on Indians, often a chief, teachers erase real Native people and temporally place them as only existing in the past or as part of a settler fantasy. This lesson plan and other acts of what Native historian Philip Deloria calls “playing Indian” are made possible by conquest’s possession of Indigenous land, bodies, and souls (Deloria, 1998; Sepulveda, 2024).
Conquest produces what Giorgio Agamben (2005) describes as a “state of exception”—a state in which the law is suspended, thereby benefiting colonization. The possession of indigeneity allows non-Indians access to Native peoples’ lands, cultures, and representations outside of the law or normative moral obligations. Within the state of exception, the violence of “playing Indian” becomes normalized, and rarely are non-Natives held accountable for their abject humiliation of Native peoples. “Playing Indian” is as old as the USA; it is, to borrow language from mathematics, the order of operations. Americans have long used Native Americans to tell stories about themselves, perhaps beginning with the Boston Tea Party in 1773. According to Deloria (1998), American social and political policy toward Indians has been a “back-and-forth between assimilation and destruction” (p. 5). This dichotomy places Indians in a state of exception, both subject to the law and simultaneously enduring violence beyond the law and moral obligations to the standard treatment of those considered part of humanity.
In this essay, we argue that the state of exception in settler schooling can help make sense of Candice Reed’s performance of sohcahtoa as a mathematics lesson. How is a lesson plan such as sohcahtoa normalized within classrooms and as part of mathematics education? Despite the assumption of mathematics’ universal truths and concepts that transcend culture, mathematics curricula and practices are layered with historical discourse. As Foucault (1977) demonstrates, discourse is produced by historical structures that create knowledge and meaning. Mathematics is not exempt from the discourse about Indigenous peoples, even when Native peoples are absent from the curricula or classroom. When Native peoples are included, they are too often reduced to caricatures possessed by settlement.
John W. North High School is a minority-serving institution. Approximately 93% of its students are minorities, and 87% are economically disadvantaged. Less than 1% are Native Americans. While staff demographics at North High are not as diverse as the student body, teachers and administrators include people of color. Candice Reed is phenotypically white; however, sources do not provide background information about her, and she did not participate in interviews. The principal, Jodi Gonzales, and the Riverside Unified School District were pressured by a diverse consortium of activists and organizations to hold Candice Reed accountable. For example, the Orange County chapter of OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates (2021) was joined by the National Urban Indian Family Coalition in issuing a statement urging the school district to “take proactive measures to prevent future occurrences, such as by taking this opportunity to educate your students about Indigenous histories and culture.” Furthermore, they argued that
This kind of action by a teacher, and the school allowing it, tells other students and parents that it is okay to commit such vulgar acts of racism against, not just Native Americans, but also Asian Americans, Pacific Islander, Latinx, Black, disabled, and many other students of color and of marginalized identities. (OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, 2021)
Anti-Native lesson plans at minority-serving institutions teach diverse students of color that they, too, can participate in settler fantasies about Native peoples and what we identify below as the state of exception.
State of exception
Giorgio Agamben (2005) traces the “state of exception” to ancient Roman law. When the Republic was threatened, the Senate could suspend normative laws, creating a “no-man’s land” functioning “between public law and political fact, and between the juridical order and life” (Agamben, 2005, p. 1). According to Agamben, the state of exception demonstrates the sovereign’s potential to exercise state power beyond and outside the normal legal order, between legality and illegality.
Historical examples of the state of exception include President Lincoln’s 1861 decision to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, thereby violating Article 1 of the US Constitution during the Civil War (Agamben, 2005, p. 20). Lincoln used his executive and sovereign power to detain or imprison individual citizens for crimes against the state without a court determining whether their detention was lawful. In a speech to Congress, Lincoln stated that it did not matter whether it was “strictly legal or not.” His decision was based on “popular demand and a public necessity” because of the threat posed to the union (Agamben, 2005, p. 20). Another example highlights President George W. Bush authorizing the “indefinite detention” of “noncitizens suspected of involvement in terrorist activities” in 2001 (p. 3). Bush’s order erased the legal status of the individual and created a “legally unnamable and unclassifiable being” (p. 3). Taliban captured in Afghanistan were not Prisoners of War as defined by the Geneva Convention. Furthermore, according to US law, they did not have the status of a person charged with a crime (p. 3). They existed in a state of exception, as detainees, where the law was suspended.
American Indians endure in a state of exception where the power of the US sovereign has suspended its law to incorporate Tribal Nations into the power relations of the state, neither recognizing tribal authority and nationhood nor completely disavowing it. Federal Indian Law and Policy recognizes Indians as nations within a nation and as domestic dependent nations. This designation was created through the judicial system, suspending the law. For example, in 1903, the Supreme Court ruled in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock that Congress has a “plenary power” to unilaterally abrogate treaties with Indian tribes and to dispose of treaty-protected lands at its discretion, suspending the treaty clause of the US Constitution (Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock).
Plenary power means that the political branches of government have absolute power over Tribal Nations. As a doctrine, plenary power was first established through Chae Chan Ping v. United States (1889), known as the Chinese Exclusion case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Congress and federal statutes can conflict with a treaty in violation of international law or federal laws when it concerns national security, territorial sovereignty, and self-preservation (Saito, 2003). The result of Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock is the suspension of law, wrongly depriving Indian Nations of the free exercise of their tribal citizenship and their rights as US citizens. In Lone Wolf, the court wrote that the power exists for the US sovereign to
abrogate the provisions of an Indian treaty, though presumably such power will be exercised only when circumstances arise which will not only justify the government in disregarding the stipulations of the treaty, but may demand, in the interests of the country and the Indians themselves, that it should do so. (Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock)
Like Agamben’s discussion of Presidents Lincoln and Bush, the Supreme Court declared the law suspended for Tribal Nations in the best interest of the US government and supposedly for the Indians themselves. Taking more Indigenous lands for settlement was a national need that justified the state of exception for Tribal Nations, just as halting the writ of habeas corpus was for Lincoln. Furthermore, in the Lone Wolf ruling, the court argued that “it was never doubted” that Congress had the power to abrogate treaties with Indian tribes, “particularly if consistent with perfect good faith towards the Indians” (Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock). Although the state of exception is intended for extraordinary circumstances of brief duration, it has become the norm for Native Nations (Mendoza, 2011).
Native peoples, according to Mark Rifkin (2012), are “an exception from the regular categories of U.S. law” (p. 78) which has created a “monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence” and a “monopoly on the legitimate exercise of legitimacy, as exclusive uncontestable right to define what will count as a viable legal or political” formulation (Rifkin, 2012, pp. 79–80). The Indian is not only subject to the suspension of law on the body or to the body politic, the Native Nation, but also to normative ways discourse and Native representation function. Indians were set outside the law and abandoned by society as modern human beings. Indians can be denied political subjectivity and simultaneously subjected to the violent forces of the state. Similarly, Indian culture and representation can be dismissed as part of modernity and civilization and simultaneously subjected to the forces of possession, placing Indians outside of history and as mere possessions of the state and its citizens. Through the state of exception, non-Indians “playing Indian” or possessing, stealing, and consuming Native identity and culture becomes the rule, the order of operations.
Through her sohcahtoa lesson plan, Candice Reed did not violate the law or cultural norms. Inhabiting the Indian is often not viewed by non-Natives as peculiar or anomalous, even when it may appear odd or ridiculous, just as it is bizarre that the USA would negotiate treaties with tribes, recognizing their nationhood, and also argue that they do not possess nationhood but are domestic dependent and only quasi-sovereign. The state of exception, which can enforce deadly and genocidal violence, is also a ridiculous dichotomy between legal and illegal, moral and immoral, respect and disrespect, humanity and inhumanity.
Indians are far from the only people to be subjected to abject humiliation and dehumanization by having their likeness and that of their ancestors caricatured. However, Natives have long been the only peoples in the USA where these caricatures continue to be as normative as Friday night football or Thanksgiving celebrations. They are an exception to the standard morals of respect and humanity, even when, as Michelle Raheja (2011) points out, “pro-mascot advocates suggest that American Indian mascots are complimentary and honorific” (p. 225). According to those who defend the use of Indian mascots, the representation of Native peoples is done in good faith. Not only are Indian mascots an exception to respecting racial differences, but they are “powerful communicators . . . of how American Indians should look and behave. American Indian mascots thus remind American Indians of the limited ways in which others see them” (Raheja, 2011, p. 225). Moreover, representations of Native peoples as mascots or other acts of “playing Indian,” including sohcahtoa as faux Indian in mathematics classrooms, function outside of educational institution policies of inclusion, belonging, equal opportunity, and mutual respect. Native representations as ridiculous performances of Indian inhumanity in settler institutions are the rule, existing outside of law and policy.
Settler colonialism as possession of native identity
“Playing Indian,” redfacing, and Native identity consumption are co-constitutive of an American national identity and are encompassed within the logics of settler colonialism. The phenomenon of white settlers “playing Indian” begins, as Phillip Deloria examines, in the earliest history of the USA (1989). Patrick Wolfe (2006) explains settler colonialism as a structure, not an event, that “destroys to replace” (p. 388). He examines how Native erasure ensures the continuance of settler life and futurity, which is threatened by Native permanence. The primary motive of settlers is access to land gained through various technologies, including forced “assimilation,” which was a central justification for the Indian boarding school system and the General Allotment Act. Settler colonialism maintains power and control over Native land and bodies. This includes a re-narration of America’s origin stories, including its “discovery” by Columbus, dependent on the inhabitation of Native identity and the performance of settler nativeness, as exemplified by the mathematics teacher at John W. North High School in 2021.
Haunani-Kay Trask’s (2000) foundational scholarship on settler colonialism is predicated on distinguishing Natives from settlers. Since settler colonialism is based on land, Native people who continue to have responsibilities to place are a never-ending threat to settler life and futurity. Trask shows how settler colonialism recreates the origin stories of Native land, making settlers the new “original habitants” of a place. Trask discusses erasure within the context of Hawai‘i. She identifies how settler anxiety reproduces identities and narratives where non-Natives recast themselves as the natives of Hawai‘i, thereby possessing Native Hawaiians and their lands for settler consumption.
Maile Arvin (2019) traces settler colonialism and the logic of possession through whiteness in Hawai‘i and Polynesia. She states that “both Polynesia (the place) and Polynesians (the people) become exotic, feminized possessions of whiteness—possessions that never have the power to claim the property of whiteness for themselves” (p. 3). She traces how the ideology of settler colonialism produces desire for an inhabitation, both figuratively and literally, that naturalizes the presence of white settlers and their consumption of Hawaiian land and people by making them the natural owners of the land. She states, “I see possession as expressing more precisely the permanent partial state of the Indigenous subject being inhabited (being known and produced) by a settler society” (p. 15). Through the logic of possession, we analyze how the state of exception exists within a high school mathematics class where Candice Reed performs settler mnemonics and native subjectivity.
The process of possession is primarily learned in schools. Settler schooling is an institution of the settler state, seeking to maintain settler society and its future. Curriculum is essential to sustain Native erasure and normalize the consumption of Native land, people, and Native identity. Bryan Brayboy (2003) provides numerous examples of how the curriculum in schools normalizes the erasure of Native people relegated to the past while simultaneously reproducing the inhabitation of Native identity through performances of Thanksgiving, singing the song “Ten Little Indians,” and sitting “Indian style” as just a few examples. “The image of the ‘Indian’ is invented and does not exist within tribal communities, but has been created by Whites in dominant society to fulfill their need to create and own a ‘real Indian’ they can control and manipulate” (Brayboy, 2003, p. 39). Brayboy speaks to the fantasy of becoming Indian and its preoccupation where the settler can become the Native in ways that are not even recognizable as Native, such as Reed’s headdress, vocables, and body movements.
Furthermore, Brayboy describes “playing Indian” in schooling practices: “In essence, individuals can make Indians real by ‘make-believing’ that they are like the Indians of old, and by ignoring modern manifestations of Natives” (pp. 40–41). Like Wolfe, Trask, and Arvin, Brayboy specifies how Natives become erased, frozen in time, and recast by settler society to maintain a settler origin story that justifies the continued occupation of Native land. This performance of nativeness becomes curricula where children learn, mimic, and participate in lessons that continuously misrepresent while inhabiting personifications that are hardly recognizable from Native culture. Following Brayboy’s analysis, Candice Reed’s performance has a genealogy of educational violence rationalized through domination. “Playing Indian” is not an event but a structure (Wolfe, 2006).
Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández (2013) additionally argue that settler schooling and its corresponding curriculum uphold the project of settler futurity. They explain that Native erasure within the curriculum is a logic of replacement, working “at a molar capacity (as a whole, almost undirected, undetectable, but pervasive) and at a molecular capacity (observable in the inter-personal, literal, seemingly accidental)” (p. 79). The settler colonial curricular project, they argue, replaces Native peoples “organically, without intent, even though Indigenous erasure is the arch aim of settler colonialism” (p. 79). They note that replacement operates through “symbolic logics” that maintain the occupation of Native land through notions of domination where Native people disappear, and settlers become Indigenous (p. 75). At the molar and molecular capacity, teacher Candice Reed’s “playing Indian” was a pervasive and observable behavior captured in yearbook photos, yet seemingly accidental because it was not immediately and consistently met with outrage.
Challenges to the settler curriculum continue daily. Michelle Raheja describes her attempt to challenge the settler colonial curriculum at her child’s school. She and a collective of parents emailed her child’s teacher, explaining that they would keep their children home when the school produced a Thanksgiving reenactment and parade. Raheja’s email was leaked to conservative media, resulting in her and her family receiving threats. Recounting this incident, she notes,
I found it curious that there is such a discrepancy in terms of how the genocidal history and stereotyping of “Indians” is rendered as an acceptable part of contemporary US education compared with the histories of other people of color. (p. 223)
Raheja states that creative lesson plans have been mounted for other minoritized groups. At the same time, the harmful curricula and traditions of “playing Indian” continue in mainstream schools, as evident in the promotion of Candice Reed’s sohcahtoa lesson plan by the school’s yearbook. Furthermore, Raheja demonstrates how settlers are threatened by, and resistant to, the disruption of “playing Indian,” even though the damaging psychological effects on Native Americans from these stereotypes and harmful images have been well documented. She states, “Stephanie A. Fryberg et al. note that the limited range of images of Indigenous peoples, including sports mascots and Hollywood film representations, promotes ‘disengagement, lower self-esteem, and decreased aspirations for careers and leadership’ among Native American individuals” (p. 225). The state of exception is applied through the settler mnemonic of the ahistorical Thanksgiving play of Pilgrims and Indians, which misrepresents Native peoples and their cultures through storytelling and “playing Indian.” Instead of a story of displacement and genocide, Thanksgiving is about happy Indians having a meal with the Pilgrims, legitimizing a benevolent colonization. The persistence of “playing Indian” and misrepresenting Native culture and history points to the insidious nature of the state of exception in schooling, where teaching about Natives is a suspension from standard rules and practices despite updated training and curricula that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Settler mnemonics are core to settler narratives that remind settlers of their ties to Native land. The recitation of these mnemonics reflects and recreates the state of exception where normal rules, practices, and/or legalities are suspended to (re)establish a settler creation story and corresponding indigeneity to land. Wolfe (2006) reminds us that Native elimination is not “tout court,” but occurs while maintaining a “refractory imprint of the Native counterclaim” (p. 389). This imprint encompasses pieces of Native culture and history that have been incorporated into settler society. Raheja notes that while mainstream America continues to support mascots and harmful images, this leaves little room for Native American self-expression and visibility. Through the examination of Candice Reed’s performative redfacing, we showcase how the state of exception operates in education, a place that is seemingly noted as liberal, through the teaching of mathematics, presumably an apolitical subject, and how the inhabitation of Native identity and its preoccupation remains a ritual in mainstream public education through a recitation of settler mnemonics.
Sohcahtoa and the politics of mathematics education
Mathematics is commonly believed to be a universal language (I & Martinez, 2020), leading to the assumption that mathematical knowledge and spaces go beyond human folly, including culture. Mathematics education, by extension, is seen as an ahistorical and politically neutral institution. However, previous research challenges these assumptions by critically examining the cultural and sociopolitical dimensions of mathematics education (Gutiérrez, 2013; Nasir et al., 2008; Valero & Zevenbergen, 2004).
Exposing the underlying assumptions behind mathematics educational policies and practices is crucial for understanding the history and experiences of Native American students in mathematics (Cheek, 1984). Specifically, in this example, we highlight how teaching mathematics with settler mnemonics contributes to the maintenance of settler colonialism. Western mathematics, especially its focus on laws, control, prediction, and logical or abstract reasoning, has been an integral component of modernity (Walkerdine, 1988), Western imperialism (Bishop, 1990; D’Ambrosio, 1985; Ziols & Kirchgasler, 2021), and settler colonialism in the USA (Gutiérrez et al., in press). A powerful theme that cuts across all these geopolitical projects is the use of school mathematics to quantify and measure cognitive differences, then treat them as inferior, reifying people as “Other” (Walkerdine, 1990). Mathematics education becomes a state tool for maintaining and justifying cultural and political domination. In this context, teaching mathematics through settler mnemonics contributes to Native erasure and assures Native possession.
Settler mnemonics and native possession on display
The video of Reed’s lesson went viral on social media in the Fall of 2021. It was recorded by a Native American student in the class during Reed’s lesson. The parents of the student who filmed the video first went to the principal, who informed them that the student may have violated school policy for filming in the classroom. After the school did not take accountability, the student’s parents asked Akalei Brown to share the video on social media. The family did not request Candice Reed’s termination, but rather an increase in the teaching of Native American history. Reed was placed on administrative leave and later terminated from her teaching position in February 2022. The video we analyze is 2-min and 18-s long and consists of four segments, spliced together and uploaded on a public YouTube channel on July 28, 2022 (The Library of Alexandria).
This study of settler mnemonics in mathematics extends beyond a single teacher and a video of her misguided ideas, which ultimately led to her termination. Candice Reed had been wearing a headdress and performing sohcahtoa in the same fashion for several years, at least since 2012, which was likely her first year of teaching. That year, John W. North High School posted a yearbook image on one of its social media accounts that shows Reed wearing a faux headdress and posing with her hands in a “chopping” gesture, smiling. The caption explains how “dancing from one end of the room to the other” and telling students a story “using math along the way” works as a “memory device.” Thus, Reed had been performing and executing this lesson plan for perhaps a decade, and the school showcased it on social media. Her settler mnemonic, sohcahtoa, is rationalized as a “memory device,” justifying its broad use in mathematics education. However, Riverside’s Indigenous community called for the district to act, decrying the incident as racist and ignorant (Cohen, 2021). Reed’s termination does not remove settler society’s obsession with (dis)possessing Native peoples through the state of exception that is normalized in education.
Firing Reed does not address the fact that sohcahtoa, as a settler mnemonic, has been part of the status quo in secondary mathematics education for decades. Two of the authors of this article recall sohcahtoa being taught in their ninth-grade Algebra II class in the 1990s. Dozens of examples spanning decades of lesson plans and other resources are available online that include a faux Indian story to teach the sohcahtoa mnemonic. These resources include published teaching notes (MacHale, 2012; Moore, 1978), a practitioner article in a leading journal aimed at teachers that provides practical knowledge (Bannat, 2013), and animated Prezi presentations involving Indian characters in warring Algebra tribes (Brennan, 2012). Many of the representations of sohcahtoa in these teaching materials involve a high degree of creativity and production, which suggests the allure of inhabiting, recasting, and normalizing the projection of oneself as Native, as Reed did.
Aside from Candice Reed, YouTube features other classroom videos, including one of teacher Mr. Dodson, filmed by one of his students telling a story about Chief Sohcahtoa. In the 2011 video, the teacher explains how he was a gifted student who would call on his imaginary friend, “Chief Sohcahotoa,” for social and academic help. At the end of the video, reminiscent of Reed, he plays Indian by running into the classroom, vocalizing a war cry with his hand over his mouth, and dramatically jumping onto his desk. While standing on the desk, he asks a student if that was the story she heard from others. She says, “Yes,” and describes a student jumping on a desk, copying the teacher’s performance (Dillbill3, 2011). Mr Dobson’s performance did not receive the same scrutiny as Candice Reed’s. Her version of sohcahtoa only became “racist” because it was caught on video by a student in her class and posted to social media to show the violence of the mathematics lesson.
As a settler mnemonic, sohcahtoa is both a result of the state of exception and a mechanism for its reinforcement. Specifically, settler mnemonics act as “memory devices,” to borrow Reed’s words, created by and for settler society, designed to help remember specific “facts” about Native peoples. These facts, however, are little more than appropriative representations of stereotypical indigeneity (Brayboy, 2003) meant to reinforce settler memory (Bruyneel, 2016a, 2016b). We utilize sohcahtoa and Reed’s performance to analyze and highlight the institutional modalities through which state power operates within a mathematics curriculum, reproducing settler memories and sustaining settler futurity (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013). Reed’s classroom theater is an example of contemporary settler colonial violence, erasure, and possession. Although it may seem unusual due to its theatricality and high production value compared to a typical mathematics lesson, from a historical settler colonial perspective, Reed’s sohcahtoa is a rote exercise in the state of exception—an introductory lesson on how the narrative of replacement lives within mathematics education.
Sohcahtoa—analyses and discussion
To analyze the video and transcript, we provide a brief overview of each of the four segments, highlighting specific points during Reed’s performance. Given the theatrics involved, our transcription notations include theater stage directions, including “downstage center,” to describe Reed’s location and physicality “on stage,” including her tone of voice and gestures. Bracketed notes, such as “[collapses against the wall; exhausted tone of voice],” mark other actions or voice quality, and double parentheses, such as “((??))” or “((What’s going on here?)),” mark inaudible utterances or a tentative transcription.
In addition to Reed, who plays the leading role, the play features other characters, including an imaginary water goddess and a rock god. Notably absent from the performance, however, are students. Some students are heard commenting and giggling, but this is meant to be a one-person show. Although Reed wrote, produced, and starred in her extreme version of sohcahtoa, the play and the conditions that enabled Reed’s performance predate her. Reed is allowed to easily step into her “Indian” role, year after year, because of the state of exception and the historical possession of Native lands and bodies. We show how sohcahtoa and “playing Indian” in mathematics class are part of the historical violence against Native peoples and how that historical violence creates the conditions that allow for that play.
Overall, Reed’s performance of sohcahtoa across the four segments is erratic, reifying several tropes and stereotypes about Native peoples, from “savage” to “noble” and a romanticized view of Indigenous religious practices and relationships with nature. The analyzed video segments provide no explanation of sohcahtoa in relation to mathematics. Reed may have told that part of the story off-camera. However, there is enough footage of Reed’s performance to analyze the significance and violence of “playing Indian” in a high school mathematics classroom and how sohcahtoa functions as a settler mnemonic.
Segment 1—getting into character, tomahawks, and chanting
This first segment begins with Reed standing downstage center as she prepares to get into character. Behind Reed is a computer projection with a header reading “Toa.” In the middle is a sketch of a stick figure wearing a headdress, standing next to what appears to be a cave with the word “Rock” at the bottom. Multiple students can be heard off-camera, but only two are visible, sitting with their backs to the camera, in front of the student recording Reed.
Reed gets into character by pretending to hold imaginary tomahawks. She starts chanting “soh-cah-toa,” marching forward toward the class—her so-called audience—then backward, which we call downstage center, and sideways, referred to as downstage right, then back to the front of the classroom, that is, center stage. At the outset, Reed’s actions reinforce the “savage” trope by using her body language and vocality to portray a different physicality for Native bodies. For example, she takes up space by making her body appear big and imposing as she marches, emphasizing “heaviness” to signify difference by pouring weight into each step as she moves.
[not in character yet] I don’t know.. tomahawks? Is that right? ((Both ways?))
[off camera] I don’t know.
Okay. [getting into character; marches forward into the middle of the classroom, chanting, clenching fists tightly, and swinging her arms up and down in a “chopping” motion; speaks in a stern voice] Soh-cah-toa, soh-cah-toa, [marches backward] soh-cah-toa!
[marches sideways, repositioning her arms into a “cactus” pose, still clenching fists; stern voice] Soh-cah-toa, soh-cah-toa, soh-cah-toa, soh-cah-toa!
[moves sideways in the other direction via quick low hops, frenetically pumping her fists in the air; chants loudly] SOH-CAH-TOA, SOH-CAH-TOA, SOH-CAH-TOA, SOH-CAH-TOA! [spins around once; screeching voice] Soh-cah-toa, soh-cah-toa! [dances in place; for a moment in a normal voice] Suck my toe? No, no!
[laughing]
((What’s going on here?))
[dances around the desk at the front of the classroom, waving her hands exaltedly in the air; high-pitched voice, screeching] SOH-CAH-TOA! SOH-CAH..
[faces the class, jumping up and down and stretching her arms away from her body like a “starfish”] SOH-CAH.. TOA! SOH-CAH.. TOA!
[collapses against the wall; exhausted tone of voice] Woah, sohcahtoa. ((??))
[indistinct chatter; giggling]
[turns to her computer at the side of the room, clicks to the next drawing showing two teepees and a stick figure wearing a bigger, colorful headdress]
[breaking character, walks over to the class projector; speaks at a normal voice level] I get to go home, [gestures toward the stick figure’s headdress] and I get all of my feathers [fans the faux paper feathers on her headdress]. There we go—
[end segment 1]
In this first segment, Reed uses her body, the classroom space, and a class projector to enact her representation of indigeneity. As prefaced above, all aspects of the performance are meant to signify difference—marking Native movement, physicality, and vocality as aggressive or out of control. Reed moves assertively up and down the aisle and across the front of the classroom. She cuts through space with domineering force, stomping her feet and waving her arms. In addition to the faux headdress, “dancing,” and drawings of a stick-figure “Indian,” Reed distinctively uses her voice. She loudly chants as she moves, sometimes sternly and sometimes in a high-pitched screech. The only times Reed speaks at an average voice level are when she breaks character. Through her chanting and screeching, she repeatedly signifies Native vocality as different.
Reed imposes not just a simple chant— “soh-cah-toa”—on her students, but a carefully choreographed, interactive performance of stereotypical nativeness—the supposed qualities of being Native. This display is intended to create difference or otherness and is rooted in the settler imaginary. While some students can be heard giggling and playing along, possibly as a means of coping with the spectacle, others are clearly disturbed, including the student recording the event.
Segment 2—“my toa!”
The second segment begins abruptly with Reed having crossed beyond the fourth wall, an invisible, imaginary barrier separating Reed’s stage—the front of the classroom—from the audience: her students. She is seen “war whooping” and making erratic “chopping” gestures as she stomps at the back of the classroom on top of a desk or possibly a bench. She hops across the classroom, back to the upstage center position, where her attention is suddenly drawn to something upstage left at the side of the classroom. She quickly darts in that direction and injures her “toa.”
The class projector now reads “Cah” with a sketch of a stick figure wearing a feather headdress next to a pond with fish. Students in this shot are all seated at their desks; some can be seen looking down or away from Reed, while others turn toward her, tracking her movement.
[puts head down on the desk; it is unclear if this student knows they are being
filmed]
[noticing that Reed is being filmed, tries to duck out of the shot]
[standing on top of a desk at the back of the classroom, stomps her feet as she “warwhoops” and makes the “chopping” motion with her arms] SOH-CAH! SOH-CAH! SOH-CAH! SOH-CAH! SOH-CAH! SOH-CAH!
[steps off the desk; in a screeching voice] Soh-cah, soh-cah..
[hops like a “kangaroo” from the back of the classroom to the front; still in a screeching voice but much louder] SOH-CAH, SOH-CAH, SOH-CAH, SOH-CAH, [flails her arms; yells loudly] SOH-CAH.. AYAYAYYYYY!
[facing the class, continues hopping and flailing her arms; cries in a louder and higher-pitched voice] SOHHHHH.. CAHHHHH.. SOHHHHH.. CAHHHHH!
[indistinct chatter; giggling]
[suddenly turns and darts to the side wall; screams frantically as she runs] SOH-CAH-SOH-CAH-SOH-CAH-SOH-CAH-SOH-CAH-SOH-CAH!
[loud thud, presumably banging her toe] Soh-OHH! Oh man, I just hurt my toa!
[walks across the room back to her computer; wails] MY TOA! My TOAHHHHH! AHHHHH!
[end segment 2]
This second segment contains, by far, Reed’s most over-the-top behaviors. Students with their heads down on the desk suggest they want out; they have had enough. However, Reed’s performance is not over, and her students are locked in. What is worth noting here, however, is not Reed’s extreme physical and vocal performances in Segment 2, where her “chanting” devolves into frantic screeching and wailing. Instead, this segment highlights state power exercised through one of its arms: education. The students are subjected to state power, as they cannot leave without facing consequences. State power is exercised as the students must sit and experience this redface spectacle, which Reed has been given the authority to perform, class after class, year after year.
Blaming Reed individually or the school for allowing this over the years misses the core theoretical point. Reed’s use of sohcahtoa is part of a broader, ongoing process of settler colonialism—referred to as “mnemonic looping” (Bruyneel, 2016b, p. 2)—where Indigenous people are symbolically present in an appropriative form but are relatively invisible as contemporary political actors. The outcome of this process is a fabricated Native identity that is perpetuated through teaching sohcahtoa, which has become a ubiquitous and enduring artifact of school mathematics. At the same time, Native peoples are erased as contemporary students, rendered invisible as active contributors to and knowers of mathematics.
Segment 3—“because, obviously, this is ridiculous”
The third segment begins with Reed downstage center, sitting on top of her desk at the front of the classroom, her hands reaching up and then clutching together in a “begging” or “praying” motion. Behind Reed is a different drawing on the projector. A student blocks the clear view of the drawing, but a small figure appears to be on top of a mountain.
[sitting on top of the desk, raises arms to “pray”; normal voice level] Water goddess, again, [makes “begging” gesture] I ask you: Please tell me the secret Indian chant. Please.
[to the class] And then I hear.. [laughs, breaking out of character] Because, [holds up her hands, open palms] obviously, this is ridiculous.
[end segment 3]
This segment imposes yet another stereotypical representation of Nativeness—a romanticized or exoticized view of Indigenous religious practices and connections to nature. Praying to a water goddess for a secret chant not only adds a new element to Reed’s possession but also enables the erasure of Indigenous histories and the suppression of Native American culture, including religion.
Breaking character, Reed acknowledges this stunt lives in the realm of the ridiculous, which should be painfully “obvious” now. It is, however, not obvious why Reed is “playing Indian” to this extreme as mathematics pedagogy. Why the production, energy, and commitment to see it through, even as students show signs that they are not okay, such as putting their heads down and questioning the teacher? The settler colonial fantasy has possessed this mathematics teacher, who, in turn, possesses Nativeness.
Segment 4—“thank you, rock god”
The start of the fourth and final segment finds Reed upstage left, where she discovers the rock god’s gift. Projected on the screen is a drawing that reads “Rock” with a stick figure next to what appears to be a cave. Like Segment 1, multiple students can be heard off-camera, but just two are visible from behind.
[standing at the side wall] Wow, look!
[off camera] You okay?
I just ran into the rock god.
[off camera] Oh my god.
[bends down to pick up a collection of painted rocks from the floor] And he spit out—
[walks back to the front desk, laughing; breaks character] Sorry. This is just too ((fun)).
[indistinct chatter; giggling]
[lays the rocks on the desk; presumably back in character] He spit out these beautiful rocks..
[out of character] which my children painted. I pulled them out of my ((planter)).
[snaps back into character] No, wait! No, no, the rock god did this.
[clears throat, lays her hands over the rocks, and deeply exhales as if to pray over them]
[groaning] Uhhh.
Thank you, rock god, for these beautiful—
[end of video]
Across all four segments, Reed uses her body differently, in distinct ways that are not part of her regular teaching, we assume. Her gestures, voice, movement in space, and the way she used her weight, throwing it around and stomping at times, normalize representations of stereotypical Nativeness as “savage,” a view of Native peoples as violent or aggressive. In addition, praying to nature and magically receiving objects—rocks—also normalizes and fetishizes these settler-invented images of Indigeneity and paganism. All the while, her students sit there, wondering, “You okay?” Settler mnemonics and colonial violence have become so normalized that Candice Reed does not even question her performance of Indianness. In contrast, a Native student sits in her classroom recording her racist production.
Conclusion
In the fall of 2021, at John W. North High School in Riverside, California, a diverse group of students attended their mathematics class, where Candice Reed subjected them to redface. She mockingly wore a paper headdress, war whooped, and moved around the classroom holding pretend tomahawks, all supposedly to teach trigonometry through the mnemonic “sohcahtoa.” Reed’s “Indian” performance was previously featured in the school’s yearbook and social media, where, for years, her redface lesson plan had been deemed appropriate behavior. This example of settler mnemonics illustrates how mathematics education can be used as a tool for maintaining and justifying cultural and political domination. In this context, teaching mathematics contributes to Native erasure and assures Native possession.
A Native American student in the classroom recorded Reed’s rendition of the sohcahtoa lesson, including its parody of Native religions. When the student’s parents approached the school’s administration to seek accountability and request a more comprehensive teaching of Native American history, the school sought to hold the Native American student accountable for the recording. As a result, the parents encouraged Akalei Brown to post the recording on social media, where it quickly went viral, leading the school district to terminate her employment.
The violence of “playing Indian” goes beyond one teacher’s racist lesson plan. As discussed throughout this article, the state of exception suspends standard rules and policies, allowing the racist practice of “playing Indian” to perpetuate a settler mnemonic that recasts settlers as the natives and depicts Native Americans only as part of America’s past. For years, Reed’s redface lesson plan was not seen as racist or violating the school’s anti-discrimination policies. The state of exception perpetually suspends Native humanity, and thus, acts of “playing Indian” have long been expected and encouraged in education. We argue that “playing Indian” is an abject humiliation that not only functions outside of law and policy but also becomes the rule for Native peoples. As we have demonstrated, settler mnemonics are ubiquitous in education, from the mythology of Thanksgiving and Columbus to Native mascots and even in mathematics lessons. Sohcahtoa is an enduring artifact of the mathematics curriculum, inextricably linked to settler colonialism.
In the case of Candice Reed and her performance, Native and Indigenous people in Riverside and the greater Southern California area refused to be passive bystanders and demanded accountability. Although Native communities have consistently fought colonialism and demanded control over their lands and bodies, settler mnemonics and the state of exception uphold a system of Native erasure and possession. The pervasiveness of settler mnemonics functions across institutions, including mathematics education, and sustains settler values.
The example of Candace Reed’s sohcahtoa lesson plan, which this article centers on, is a stark and dramatic illustration of settler mnemonics. However, all forms of “playing Indian” stem from the state of exception and serve to reinforce it. The state of exception and settler mnemonics continue to normalize the possession of Native land and life. Awareness of their ongoing harm is a first step in acknowledging Native humanity.
Footnotes
Author’s Note
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and publication of this article.