An ugly incident in Colorado involving racial profiling and bizarre misconceptions around heavy metal imagery has unexpectedly drawn a Vancouver band into the fray.
The incident began April 30 when a pair of Indigenous brothers — Thomas Kanewakeron Gray, 19, and Lloyd Skanahwati Gray, 17 — were detained by campus police at Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins, Colo.
The prospective students had travelled from their homes in New Mexico to CSU for a campus tour, but arrived late and joined the tour group a half hour into the proceedings.
Their late arrival prompted a woman on the same tour to call 911, fearful of the boys’ appearance and demeanour. Both teens were wearing heavy metal hoodies — one belonging to Californian extreme metal act Cattle Decapitation, while the other featured the logo of Vancouver’s Archspire.
“They just really stand out. Their clothing has dark stuff on it… weird symbolism or wording on it,” the 911 caller said.
The caller went on to suggest the boys were Hispanic and their presence on the campus tour made her feel “sick.” The woman acknowledged she was likely being “paranoid,” though campus police intervened shortly after the call. The boys missed the rest of the tour and returned home.
“I think it’s pretty discriminatory,” Thomas Kanewakeron Gray told the Associated Press late last week. “Me and my brother just stayed to ourselves the whole time. I guess that was scaring people; that we were just quiet.”
The fallout in the week since has made headlines across the world. CSU president Tony Frank issued a statement May 4 condemning the incident, while also offering to cover the brothers’ travel expenses. Frank has also promised another tour of the campus, should the brothers still be interested in going to school there.
The pair’s mother, Lorraine Kahneratokwas Gray, has been featured in numerous print and TV stories over the last week and addressed the 911 caller directly in a Facebook post.
“I don’t believe the woman’s identity or name matters,” she said. “She represents a body of people with narrow minds who are walking amongst the general population every day. Her fear did not only include race, but social/financial class, age discrimination, and freedom of expression. We don’t need her apology to validate who we are.”
Archspire issued a statement May 6 in which the band offered free tickets to the band’s next gig in Denver to the 911 caller and her family.
“With any hope, seeing the unity and undeniable joy that’s brought into the lives of these young music and art enthusiasts, might change her bias [sic] opinion about who they really are at their core,” the band said on Facebook.
Archspire guitarist Dean Lamb gives lessons to one of the brothers whenever the band performs in Denver.
“He’s seriously super nice and anything but suspicious, maybe a little shy?” Lamb wrote online. “I have nothing political to add, other than this sucks that they missed out on their college tour and were treated poorly by the authorities.”
Via their Facebook page, Cattle Decapitation has offered the brothers free admission to their shows in perpetuity.
Thomas Kanewakeron Gray responded to the band’s post over the weekend, noting the response from the heavy metal community has been “very overwhelming.”
“I hope this teaches a lesson to everyone that is going through any sort of discrimination or racial acts,” he said. “Keep yourself going. What happened was wrong in so many ways and we wish this on no one else.”
@JohnKurucz
