The first apology from the Oklahoma State University student, Austin Buchanan, who held up a racially insensitive sign on ESPN last weekend read “Sorry to everyone that got butt hurt by my last tweet, just btw I’m 1/16th Cherokee and my family and Indian friends thought it was hilariou” (sic) according to the website fansided.com. The reference is to the sign OSU students held up on ESPN’s “College GameDay” over the weekend in support of their team in a match-up with The Florida State University Seminoles that read “Send ‘Em Home #trail_of_tears #gopokes.”
Mentioning to the Trail of Tears, the forced migration of the Cherokee people from their rightfully held homeland in Georgia to Oklahoma, on which thousands of people died, was seen as not only insensitive, but especially racist as this sign was being held up on the actual 175th anniversary of The forced removal.
Buchanan allegedly released a statement to the press that was eloquent and quite moving to many people, but Mike Dyce, onFansided.com, published a report that brings the authenticity of both the authorship of the press release and the sincerity behind it into question. Dyce has posted screen captures of Buchanan’s Twitters from the same day, one is homophobic, “Ok the fuq are ou fans doing at OSU FSU GameDay? #fingfags go home,” the other is “Going to Dallas niggas! #GoPokes.”
Once the apology was released Dyce noted “Austin Buchanan, the student making the Tweets above, has released a statement to Fansided. It is portrayed as if he wrote it, but given the way his Tweets were worded and phrased, it is probably safe to assume he had help writing this. Hard to imagine he went from defending the sign and saying those offended were “butt hurt” while tailgating and participating in pre-game festivities, to apologetic in a matter of hours.”
We wanted to ask Mr. Buchanan about these Tweets, which he doesn’t mention in his apology, but as he says in his press release “I have deactivated my Twitter account so that I can give serious thought to how I can use all forms of communication more appropriately and positively in the future.” He also seems to have deactivated his facebook account, however we were able to obtain his OSU email address and sent him an interview request, but after 2 days there was no response.
“I was made aware of those (Tweets) this afternoon; I knew that he had said some things after the sign, but I didn’t know what that was,” said Gary Shutt, spokesman for OSU. “Certainly the university doesn’t condone that sign; it was pretty insensitive and hurtful, and that was what we tweeted through social media after we saw the sign was out there. We asked that it be removed and it was taken down at the game day event.”
All the other trails leading to Austin Buchanan seem to have disappeared on the web.
Wilhelm Murg grew up on the Osage Reservation outside of Pawhuska and is a freelance writer based in Tulsa. He has written for a variety of publications including Native American Times, Indian Country Today Media Network, Native Peoples Magazine, High Times, and Tulsa Pets Monthly, and he has been the editor of Infinity Press, OUTline Magazine, The Gayly Oklahoman, and ZONYX: A University of Tulsa Review. He is currently working on a book about Pop Culture.
