Indigenous Nations Heritage Month

Visit this online exibit from the National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian)

Opened on November 11, 2020 on the grounds of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. This tribute to Native heroes recognizes for the first time on a national scale the enduring and distinguished service of Native Americans in every branch of the US military.

Explore the commemorative issue featuring this enduring tribute to Native veterans. (Digital/fully online)

In partnership with the National Museum of the American Indian, the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center collects and preserves the unique stories of Native men and women who have served in the military through interviews, correspondence, and photographs.

Stories from the Veterans History Project: Native American veterans have a long history of military service, a legacy which continues to inform their current participation in the armed forces. Since 9/11, Native Americans have served at a higher per-capita rate than any other ethnic group. While their reasons for serving are as diverse as their tribal affiliations, many cite their desire to follow in the footsteps of family members, as well as the cultural value placed on patriotism, duty, and warrior traditions within their communities. Here, we present the narratives of 18 Native American veterans, all of whom served in conflicts from WWII to Iraq and Afghanistan. Including stories ranging from Navajo Code Talkers to those who traded Indian boarding schools for boot camp, all of these collections explore the meaning and experience of American military service. (Library of Congress)

The Veterans History Project (VHP) at the Library of Congress collects and preserves the firsthand interviews and narratives of United States military veterans from World War I through the present. This includes collections relating to Navajo Code Talker veterans. Comprised primarily of oral histories, these collections document the personal stories of individual Code Talkers. This guide will introduce VHP's holdings related to the Navajo Code Talkers.

ABSTRACT: Native Americans have experienced widespread militarization as the result of a number of factors. First, many Native nations militarized in reaction to the weaponry and threats presented by invading Europeans. Secondly, the Europeans and later the Americans used Native Americans as auxiliaries and allies in their wars against other Native nations. Finally, militarization came to several tribes by way of the U.S. policy of assimilating American Indians into mainstream American society. Militarization, in short, became a way of legitimizing Native citizenship. Many Indians, however, look upon their military service in a different way. Native American militarization resembles that of the Nepalese Gurkha veterans of the British Army.

ABSTRACT: The literature on Indigenous participation in the Second World War from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand has tended to portray Indigenous soldiers as exceptionally able and courageous in battle. While heart-warmingly laudatory and an understandable product of genuine evidentiary challenges in researching this subject, the image constructed is partial and unrealistic. At best it is misleading; at worst it conflates indigeneity and combat proficiency in ways that reinforce racial stereotypes of Indigenous people as 'natural' warriors prevalent during the war. This article argues that we discard the exceptionalism enshrouding Indigenous combat performance in favour of a more culturally nuanced approach.

INTRODUCTION: In the mid-1860s the Arikaras, or Sahnish, struggled against Sioux (Dakota and Lakota) incursions into their territory. After first forming an alliance with the Mandans and Hidatsas to resist Sioux expansion, Sahnish leaders White Shield and Son of Star also attempted to create a military alliance with the United States. By allowing Sahnish men to scout for the U.S. Army, White Shield and Son of Star pursued a strategy that would take the war into enemy territory and place the Sioux on the defensive.

Although racist attitudes were widespread in the U.S. Army, the Sahnish scouts gradually earned respect and appreciation for their service from regular officers and enlisted men. Among these was Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, who developed a close friendship with the Sahnish people. Meanwhile, realizing the danger posed by the SahnishU.S. military alliance, the Sioux began to target the scouts deliberately to discourage other Sahnish men from enlisting. Sadly, although the military establishment respected and appreciated the sacrifices and contributions of the scouts, the U.S. government did little to help these men after their service with the U.S. Army was over.

ABSTRACT: Gorham's Rangers, initially an all-Indian ranger company, was instrumental in Britain's conquest of Nova Scotia (Acadia) during the eighteenth century. In the process of uncovering that story, the essay assesses New England Indians’ role in shaping colonial frontier warfare as well as the impact of military service on Native American communities.

ABSTRACT: Abel, the Army veteran and Pueblo protagonist of N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, is undoubtably haunted by his battlefield experiences during World War II, and when critics consider Abel's military service, they focus almost exclusively on its negative effects. Because the only sections of text focusing on Abel's military service describe the same traumatic battlefield event, this perspective is somewhat understandable, but this perspective-one that presumes Abel's military experience was only traumatic and therefore only negative, alienating, and destructive1-ignores textual indications that Abel's service experience was more nuanced. First among these indications is a subtly revealed fact that suggests he harbored feelings about the Army beyond critics' typical assumptions related to trauma and alienation. Paradoxically, this dearth of textual evidence makes Abel's military service and especially its critical interpretation ripe for examination. Because Momaday leaves Abel's Army experience a half empty vessel, critics have filled it with their own assumptions about military service-assumptions that, I will argue, result in an overdetermined reading of the novel. Historians agree the vast majority of Native Americans serving during World War II wanted to serve, and before the attack on Pearl Harbor and even more so afterwards, Native Americans enrolled in selective service or voluntarily enlisted at a higher rate than the rest of the American population (Bernstein 42-43; Franco 41-42, 61-63; Townsend 61-63, 72-73).

From this article: Ironically, tribal languages were being used as perhaps the greatest military weapon in the war. One German prisoner of war admitted that the German military could break any code, but the Choctaw language that was used to convey messages completely stumped them. The Germans could not understand the language or its origin and hence could not decode it. The tribal languages that were strictly prohibited by federal policy ultimately helped the United States to win WWI, although this fact was not released immediately to the public...