The pride and commitment of American Indians in defending their country shows especially in their contributions to fighting WWII:
More than 44,000 American Indians, out of a total Native American population of less than 350,000, served with distinction between 1941 and 1945 in both European and Pacific theaters of war. Native American men and women on the home front also showed an intense desire to serve their country, and were an integral part of the war effort. More than 40,000 Indian people left their reservations to work in ordnance depots, factories, and other war industries. American Indians also invested more than $50 million in war bonds, and contributed generously to the Red Cross and the Army and Navy Relief societies.From a 1996 Department of the Navy resource:
Battle-experienced American Indian troops from World War II were joined by newly recruited Native Americans to fight Communist aggression during the Korean conflict. The Native American's strong sense of patriotism and courage emerged once again during the Vietnam era. More than 42,000 Native Americans, more than 90 percent of them volunteers, fought in Vietnam. Native American contributions in United States military combat continued in the 1980s and 1990s as they saw duty in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, and the Persian Gulf.
As the 20th century comes to a close, there are nearly 190,000 Native American military veterans. It is well recognized that, historically, Native Americans have the highest record of service per capita when compared to other ethnic groups.Culture plays a large part in the high numbers of Indians who volunteer for service:
The reasons behind this disproportionate contribution are complex and deeply rooted in traditional American Indian culture. In many respects, Native Americans are no different from others who volunteer for military service. They do, however, have distinctive cultural values which drive them to serve their country. One such value is their proud warrior tradition.In part, the warrior tradition is a willingness to engage the enemy in battle. This characteristic has been clearly demonstrated by the courageous deeds of Native Americans in combat. However, the warrior tradition is best exemplified by the following qualities said to be inherent to most if not all Native American societies: strength, honor, pride, devotion, and wisdom. These qualities make a perfect fit with military tradition.
Participating in military service, of course, means being numbered among the military wounded and dead. Native American service men and women have been decorated as heroes, and buried as heroes, as well.
U.S. Marine and Pima Indian Ira Hamilton Hayes was one of the six men who raised the American flag in the historic 1945 Iwo Jima photograph. Dubbed a national hero, he was tormented by survivor's guilt:
President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the brave survivors of the flag raising back to the United States to aid a war bond drive. At the White House, President Truman told Ira, "You are an American hero." But Ira didn't feel pride. As he later lamented, "How could I feel like a hero when only five men in my platoon of 45 survived, when only 27 men in my company of 250 managed to escape death or injury?" Later, they were shuttled from one city to another for publicity purposes with questionable sincerity on the part of the American military. Ira Hayes asked to be sent back to the front lines, stating that "sometimes I wish that guy had never made that picture".Mental stress and alcoholism that resulted from his service in WWII ultimately led to his death by exposure in 1955. He was 33. Johnny Cash wrote a touching song about him:
The Ballad of Ira HayesIn August of 2005, Stories in America blog interviewed Thomas Berry, a Choctaw Indian from Oklahoma who served in Vietnam and the first war in Iraq. Disabled from his military service, Berry has post-traumatic stress disorder, nerve damage and degenerative joint disease in his lower back, so he also has extensive experience with disabled veterans services and the ways that it fails to help the men and women who must rely on it. He started the National Native Americans Veterans Association to try and fill the need of disabled Indian veterans.
Ira Hayes,
Ira Hayes
CHORUS:
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war
Gather round me people there's a story I would tell
About a brave young Indian you should remember well
From the land of the Pima Indian
A proud and noble band
Who farmed the Phoenix valley in Arizona land
Down the ditches for a thousand years
The water grew Ira's peoples' crops
'Till the white man stole the water rights
And the sparklin' water stopped
Now Ira's folks were hungry
And their land grew crops of weeds
When war came, Ira volunteered
And forgot the white man's greed
CHORUS:
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war
There they battled up Iwo Jima's hill,
Two hundred and fifty men
But only twenty-seven lived to walk back down again
And when the fight was over
And when Old Glory raised
Among the men who held it high
Was the Indian, Ira Hayes
CHORUS:
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war
Ira returned a hero
Celebrated through the land
He was wined and speeched and honored; Everybody shook his hand
But he was just a Pima Indian
No water, no crops, no chance
At home nobody cared what Ira'd done
And when did the Indians dance
CHORUS:
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war
Then Ira started drinkin' hard;
Jail was often his home
They'd let him raise the flag and lower it
like you'd throw a dog a bone!
He died drunk one mornin'
Alone in the land he fought to save
Two inches of water in a lonely ditch
Was a grave for Ira Hayes
CHORUS:
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war
Yeah, call him drunken Ira Hayes
But his land is just as dry
And his ghost is lyin' thirsty
In the ditch where Ira died
When you start talking about mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder, it's hard to gauge how much money you need to put forward to restore that individual. I'll tell you up front, you'll never restore that individual. I still have a lot of problems. I still have nightmares from things I've seen. I expect to have that for the rest of my life. That's not just me. I have an uncle who was in the Navy in Korea who still has nightmares. That was over 50 years ago. Unfortunately, there is no way to prepare a young man or woman for what they might and will face in a combat zone. You just can't do it.Berry's organization, NNAVA, seeks to help veterans, but also to emotionally support those currently serving in Afghanistan and Iraq:
It's a Native American tradition, where a young man who goes into battle will only wear moccasins. Moccasins were made for him to help him find his way home or find his way into the next life. What we're doing is using that Native tradition. We're making moccasins in the traditional manner. We have a list of over 400 Native Americans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are the ones we know about. We're wrapping the moccasins in red flannel. Wrapping something in red is what you do for sacred objects. We're sending moccasins to these young Native American troops as a sign of respect for the sacrifice that they're making. It's a way of honoring their service. We've sent 100 pair of moccasins already.On the difficulty of getting treatment through the VA hospitals, Berry says:
Oklahoma has two VA hospitals. They are totally independent of each other. Protocols for treatment are completely different. There's no standard protocol. Unless you know how each individual hospital works, you're stuck. If I need PTSD treatment, I have to go to Dallas, Texas. At this point, I combine services between Indian Health Clinics and the VA. I believe there's 175 medical centers in the VA system and they are all different. If they standardized, they would save a lot of money.Though Berry can combine VA services with those offered at the Indian Health Clinics, those services lack adequate federal funding and suffer from the historical neglect and indifference of U.S. policy toward the needs of Native populations.
That neglect and indifference can also be seen in the media representation of Native American service men and women -- or the lack of representation of their work. Lori Piestewa, a Hopi mother and the first American service woman to officially die in combat, was the smaller supplemental media story to the ambush and dramatic recovery of blond, white service woman Jessica Lynch. From the RollingStone article that documents Piestewa's very Hopi contributions to the war:As it is for so many, military service was an opportunity for Piestewa to help her country and provide for her family:If Lori had been born a century earlier, the United States government would have considered her an enemy. In the late 1800s, the U.S. Cavalry invaded Hopi lands and decreed that the fields now belonged to white settlers. The Hopi fought back, not with guns or arrows but with nonviolent resistance. (The name Hopi means "peaceful people.") In defiance of the military, Hopi farmers continued to cultivate their lands. The Army arrested nineteen Hopi leaders and sent them to Alcatraz, where some spent as long as two years in solitary.
Piestewa was raised in this Hopi tradition of nonviolence, which emphasizes helping others, starting at home, with one's own family and clan, and extending outward to include the entire community and nation. (Her father, Terry, is Hopi; her mother, Percy, is Hispanic.) As a baby, Lori had her hair washed in a Hopi ceremony and was given the name Kocha-hon-mana: White Bear Girl. "We Hopi were put on this earth to be peaceful," explains Terry, a short, round man with graying hair and a soft voice.
For Native Americans, patriotism and military service are complex, often contentious issues. Some Indians call those who join the military "apples" -- red on the outside, white on the inside. (One T-shirt popular on the reservation bears an old-time photograph of four Indians, rifles at the ready, with the words, homeland security: fighting terrorism since 1492.) But many American Indians still consider this their homeland and have fought to defend it; during World War II, one in eight Indians joined the military.
For Lori, the military was just another way to help others -- starting with her kids and her family. "She wanted to fend for her children," says her mother, Percy. "She was going to build us a house and take care of us. I think she weighed the options that she had. We're not rich enough to send her to college. When you have obstacles in your way, you take what life offers."
The events in Iraq that led to Piestewa's death and Lynch's rescue have been used to help paint our occupation of Iraq as a successful show of force, but Piestewa's family were troubled by the reported tales of Lori's last moments:
Even after Lori was buried, the circumstances surrounding her death remained sketchy. Every rumor was reported as fact, and her family didn't know what to believe. They received reports of Lori fighting to the death, taking many Iraqis with her. "She drew her weapon and fought," Rick Renzi, an Arizona congressman, announced after one Army briefing. "It was her last stand."
It was the kind of image that would make many military families proud: the heroic warrior, guns blazing, fighting to the end. But when Terry Piestewa finally learned the truth about his daughter's death, he was relieved. Lori hadn't fired a shot. All she was doing was driving, trying to get the people she cared about to safety.
"We're very satisfied she went the Hopi way," her father says, smiling. "She didn't inflict any harm on anybody."
AP Photo above shows Jessica Lynch with Lori Piestewa, both in camouflage military uniform.
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