By Hannah Davis-Reid, WXPR

This story was produced and originally published by WXPR and Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom.

Lynda Hagen was elevating her broken foot at home in Mercer, Wisconsin, in November 2023 when she got a call from the local school district. Another student had assaulted her 10-year-old son Nate, the district administrator told her.

Hagen threw on a sweatshirt, slipped on her walking cast with her husband’s help and rushed to her car.

With tears streaming down her cheeks, she drove to Mercer’s public K-12 school and district building, worried about Nate’s condition and angry it had come to this.

“I had just felt four years of frustration just come flying out,” she recalled.

She said Nate, an enrolled member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, had faced years of bullying and racism at school, much of it surrounding his Native identity. It escalated during his third-grade year despite Hagen’s complaints to school and district officials, she said.

After Hagen learned more about the November assault and Nate received even more threats at school, she, her husband and her four children decided for Nate’s safety to leave Mercer, population roughly 1,600, not far from the Lac du Flambeau Band reservation.

Now, as Nate adjusts to a new school and continues to recover from the injuries he suffered, Hagen said she is speaking out in hopes that schools will take such bullying more seriously.

“My Native American, tribally enrolled child went to a school that, from the moment he stepped on the bus, until the moment he got off the bus, they were responsible for his safety,” Hagen said. “And they failed him in every aspect.”

Nate Hagen lets his neighbor’s pet buck lick his hand on Sept. 10, 2024. His mother, Lynda, said that pets have been an important part of their family’s healing process since Nate was assaulted at school last year. (Credit: Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)

Nate isn’t alone. Studies have shown that Native American students experience systemically high rates of violence and threats at school — a long-lasting problem. WXPR also spoke with an adult Lac du Flambeau Band member who recalled enduring school bullying during her childhood.

“When you have Indigenous children and you see the things that happen across Indian Country or across the nation, you always hope that never happens to my kid,” she said. “And then it does.”

Complaints: Bullying lasted years

Classmates had teased Nate since kindergarten. They made fun of his long braided hair, a custom in many Native American cultures, and they called him homophobic, transphobic and racist slurs, Hagen wrote in a since-dismissed complaint to the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and in a letter to the district.

A classmate allegedly told him to “go back to where he came from” and broke six pairs of his glasses, she wrote, and Nate allegedly faced multiple threats to cut off his braid.

Hagen told WXPR that the district offered little help.

Then came Nov. 29, 2023, when Nate and his friends played a recess game of keepaway in the school gym.

His alleged longtime bully interrupted them and kicked their volleyball across the room, according to reports by Mercer School District Administrator Renae McMurray and the Iron County Sheriff’s Office — both of which cited video footage of the incident.

After a brief skirmish over the ball, Nate’s classmate grabbed him by the neck and pulled him toward the floor. The sheriff’s office report described a chokehold of 5 or 6 seconds that “caused him to cough, choke and made it hard to breathe.”

After another student pushed the classmate off of Nate, the aggressor “grabs Nate’s hair and pushes him back toward the floor,” McMurray’s report said. Lynda Hagen, who was shown the footage, used stronger words. She said the classmate grabbed Nate’s braid and “thrashed his body back and forth,” until Nate’s two friends broke the boys apart. When the classmate let go, Nate’s head slammed against the ground and “bounced off the floor like a basketball,” Hagen said.

Nate Hagen, right, waits outside a gas station with his sister, Sophie, before heading to Milwaukee for a doctor appointment on Sept. 11, 2024. (Credit: Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)

In an interview, Nate recalled the aftermath.

“I was on the ground trying to get my breath, and my head was hurting, because I hit my head and my shoulder was hurting too,” Nate told WXPR.

The video showed no teacher around to intervene, Hagen said. Neither report from the district and sheriff’s office mentions adult intervention.

Two students later independently corroborated that the aggressor called Nate “gay,” McMurray’s report said.

Nate’s friends lifted him up and supported him as he walked to the office, where Nate said he was told to calm down and not overreact. There, McMurray called Lynda Hagen, who rushed over.

Hagen expressed surprise that school officials didn’t more closely check on his injuries or call law enforcement. Hagen called the sheriff’s office when she arrived at the school.

The school district’s student handbook says in cases of accidents, illness or concussions, personnel should administer first aid, if trained to do so, and summon medical help.

“All students, administrators, teachers, staff, and all other school personnel share responsibility for avoiding, discouraging, and reporting any form of harassment,” it says.

Hagen suspects Nate would have been treated differently if he weren’t Native.

McMurray’s report, dated three weeks after the assault, said Nate’s alleged bully was disciplined but did not elaborate. It is unclear whether the classmate faced criminal consequences since many juvenile criminal records are confidential.

Nate was given a safety plan to keep him separate from the other classmate, McMurray’s report said.

Racist bullying: ‘It was the norm when we were in school’

Outside of Mercer’s single school district, research shows systematic differences in how schools have treated Native children compared to white students.

Few Native educators work in Wisconsin public school districts, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. Meanwhile, Wisconsin in past years has been a national leader in referring Native students to law enforcement — doing so at rates far higher than those of white students, causing ripple effects later in children’s lives.

Lac du Flambeau Band member Jordan Edwards, 35, recalled routinely facing racist bullying and disproportional discipline during her school years in the Crandon area, about 80 miles southeast of Mercer.

She recalled a student one day yelling racial slurs — calling her and her friends “dirty savages” who didn’t belong at the school — while they sat in the lunchroom. School officials “allowed it to happen and watched it,” she said.

After one of her Native friends punched the bully, Edwards said the friend was the only one who faced discipline.

“It was the norm when we were in school. It’s like you either stood up for yourself and got in trouble, or you sat back and you just took it, because nothing would happen when you would report an issue,” Edwards said.

A nurse asks Nate Hagen, right, about his neck pain while checking him in for his doctor’s appointment on Sept. 11, 2024, at Greenfield Pediatrics in Milwaukee. (Credit: Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)

Such behavior, Edwards said, will persist “until more and more people are willing to stand up.” Until then, bullied students in rural communities will be left with few opportunities to be safe at school.

“When we’re in these small communities the closest school is almost 20 miles away,” Edwards said. “So it’s like going to another school isn’t an option.”

Chase Iron Eyes is the executive director of the Sacred Defense Fund, a Native-led nonprofit dedicated to protecting lands, waters and Indigenous communities. He’s an enrolled member of Oglala Lakota and Standing Rock Sioux tribes.

Iron Eyes said such stories are common for Native families across the country who “go through these cyclic episodes of violence and bullying.”

His messages to those children and their parents: “To stay strong, to hang in there — that they’re not alone.”

Nightmares and headaches follow assault

The safety plan Nate’s school approved following the assault sought to keep his alleged bully at a distance during the school day. Nate would also occasionally check in with trusted staff.

It didn’t prevent the classmate from threatening Nate’s life on the last day of the 2023-2024 school year, the family said — a brief encounter that Nate’s older brother witnessed.

The encounter helped convince the family to uproot to a different town, where Nate now attends a different school. WXPR agreed to withhold the name of the town for the family’s safety.

Almost a year after the assault, Nate suffers from nightmares and daily severe headaches, as well as neck, shoulder and lower back pain that his doctors say could be lifelong, according to medical records his mother shared with WXPR. He was recently referred to a pediatric neurosurgeon.

The family in April signed a legal settlement with the Mercer School District for terms that remained undisclosed.

Asked for details, McMurray said in an email: “the Parents and School District have worked collaboratively to resolve the concerns brought forward by the Parents. The School District has expanded its library and provided training to staff related to Native American culture.”

McMurray couldn’t respond further, she said, due to privacy laws around student information.

Nate Hagen, left, rides an elevator up to his doctor’s appointment with his mother, Lynda, and his father, David, on Sept. 11, 2024, at Greenfield Pediatrics in Milwaukee. (Credit: Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)

The Lac du Flambeau Tribal Education Department says it remains committed to the safety of tribal members across various schools.

“In the past we have provided resources to the Mercer school district to facilitate the protection and success of Native students in their schools, but we are currently unaware of if those resources are being utilized,” the department told WXPR in an email. “We are and have been willing to work with them again at any point if they are interested, in the same manner we are willing to work with any and all area schools.”

At the new school and in a new community, Nate and his family are trying to move on and heal. The school has more Native students than Mercer did.

Nate’s uncle and godfather got him involved in Big Drum, a ceremony that Nate is trying out.

“He’s being more grounded in his Native American culture and roots,” his mother said.