tlatollotl:

The brothers saved up their money and pointed the family van north, rolling seven hours from Santa Cruz, N.M., to Fort Collins, Colo.

Thomas Kanewakeron Gray, 19, and his brother Lloyd Skanahwati Gray, 17, Native Americans from the Mohawk tribe, were heading to check out the campus of Colorado State University. Both were not just interested in attending — CSU was their dream school, their mother would later say.

But the brothers did not receive the warm welcome they were expecting.

“It is one of their first experiences out in the real world and they run into this cruel world,” their mother, Lorraine Kahneratokwas Gray, told the Denver Post this week. “That’s why we have to speak out. My sons need to find the courage of speak out.”

The brothers’ time in Fort Collins got off to a bad start. They got lost in the new city, eventually arriving 30 minutes late to a scheduled campus tour for prospective students Monday. Then as the group was moving through the campus gymnasium, campus police officers approached the pair of shaggy-haired teenagers, demanding to know what they were doing on campus, the Associated Press reported.

The brothers had reportedly unnerved another parent on the tour, making the individual “nervous.” The parent called the police to report the suspicious pair.

“Apparently, a parent on the tour called police because they were too quiet. That made them suspicious,” their mother told the Denver Post. “They were trying to listen. Why should it be a crime to listen and not engage in a conversation?”

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Two Native American brothers were touring a Colo. college when a parent called police. They say it was racial profiling.