Nex Benedict was a Tulsa-area teen of Choctaw descent. His friends described him as an “adventurous little thing” who had a flair for creating art with a sense of ease. They called him “Roachie,” and he was loved.

After Nex’s death in February 2024, his portrait splayed across international news, vigils and social media posts. The picture shows Nex with deep brown eyes, short, loose brown curls grown out a little bit and a gentle smile. Nex has a crisp white shirt and black vest on. He looks like he’s dressed up for a dance or recital, at that cusp age of 16, when pre-teen clothes are out and quality vintage clothes become of interest.

On February 8, 2024, Nex collapsed and died at his home. The day before, he sustained a head injury during severe bullying at his school, Owasso High. The medical examiner ruled Nex’s passing a suicide after finding an antidepressant and an allergy medication in his system. This finding has been questioned repeatedly by local community members and national organizers.

“Regardless if it was caused by the fight or suicide, Nex died from bullying. Period,” said Olivia Carter, administrative coordinator for Oklahomans for Equality.

Nex’s death did not happen in a vacuum.

In the immediate wake of his passing, a discourse erupted about anti-trans legislation, social neglect and health care inequity. But, in order to fully understand Nex’s death by bulling, this present history needs to be analyzed alongside histories ofthe boarding school system and the Indian Removal Act — policies that resulted in land theft, warfare, cultural genocide and widespread propaganda campaigns that stoked fear, dehumanization and colonial violence against Indigenous and Two-Spirit peoples.

Both the anti-trans campaigns and the boarding school system share a key component: the attempt of the far right United States political body to enforce a heteronormative, Christian identity on the public. And both the boarding school system and the anti-trans campaigns have yielded lethal results.

Since the introduction of anti-trans bathroom bills in 2015, anti-trans rhetoric and policy have been on the rise throughout the U.S. The increased vitriol against trans people has resulted in over 650 anti-2SLGBTQ (Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and additional sexual orientations and gender identities) policies being introduced in 2024 alone. As a high political watermark, the Heritage Foundation’s Christian nationalist Project 2025 paints a picture of the U.S. where transgender ideas are codified as “pornographic” and are thus minimized, if not eradicated, from public life.

Despite the majority of the U.S. population believing that trans people should be protected from discrimination, trans identities, culture and medical care have been used by the far right as an effective wedge issue in U.S. politics. This tactic of engaging a “hot-button” or controversial topic to drum up political fervor often includes pushing bigotry against a perceived mortal threat of “the other.”

This bigotry, often stoked by moral panic and misinformation, has been used to create support for policies that marginalize members of the public and restrict basic bodily autonomy. When enacted, othering policies limit, or even remove, the demonized community’s ability to get their basic needs (like gender-affirming care or a safe abortion) met above ground. Thus, these life-supporting services become less and less publicly available — especially to poor, Black, Indigenous, undocumented and/or rural communities.

This pattern (of social and political othering that results in the denial of material resources)is a key tactic of the violence that underpins settler colonialism in the U.S., and public institutions (like schools) are key enforcers of settler values. Thus, the history and impact of the settler-led school system on LGBTQ and Indigenous communities must be understood in order to fully unpack the broader circumstances surrounding Nex Benedict’s death.

Starting in 1819, the U.S. government instituted a sprawling schooling system consisting of 408 federal Indian boarding........

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