The Warrior Tradition

[Music] a lot of people ask why did you join the white man's war they weren't nice to you that may be so still this is our land this is our home this has always been our home and part of the commitment to protecting and defending your home led to military service we have the highest per capita service rate out of any group in america because of the fact that our native people have always wanted to fulfill that warrior path as a native american woman and also growing up in a military family it was just natural for me to want to join the military i always saw myself as a warrior i was told i was i was told i was strong i can do anything and i believed it still do as i left for the military i was given these feathers right here these two were carried by my great great great grandfather on his rifle when he was an apache scout [Music] those feathers carried with me my ancestors they had been to world war one they've been to world war ii they've been to korea vietnam and as i was carrying that i felt like i had my family with me to protect me being a warrior is not necessarily about going out and killing people it's about keeping the peace as well and making sure that our traditions and culture staying in line with our values protecting our land our family our community and that's part of the warrior tradition [Music] i've always wanted to be a soldier i didn't want to be anything else i wanted to be a soldier when i was young i grew up in my grandparents home and in my grandparents home there was a photograph of my great uncle he was killed in action on 10 april 1945 in germany i always saw this photo in my grandparents home around 1954 my uncle's photo who served in the army was placed next to him in 1955 my aunt's photograph an air force veteran was placed next to him so from about age six seven and as i progressed as a teenager i saw these free photos of these three veterans my aunt my uncle and my great uncle and that was an inspiration for me to enlist in the military plus my taiwan comanche heritage i wanted to be a warrior [Music] i grew up in a very strong military family my great-great-grandfather was an apache scout my great-grandfather served in world war one then i had my uncles serve in world war ii and korea and then my uncle in vietnam and then my mom served as well growing up around my family members i would start asking questions uh what it meant to be a warrior [Music] if you're a veteran amongst the comanches or the kiowas you're kind of like special you're respected because of what you did in the military and if you go to war and you're in combat you're kind of set on a pedestal we have the comanche indian veterans association court of honor the highlight of that memorial is a life-size statue [Music] dedicated to our comanche code talkers of world war ii it's called the spirit talker the comanche court of honor that has about 1200 names of our comanches that have served in the military their relatives their friends when they come to the complex it's always a point that they go to our memorial and they point their finger and say hey this was my grandfather i didn't know he did this i didn't know he did that i remember going to powwows growing up and and seeing the opening ceremony and the veterans coming in i always wanted to be a part of that uh george take about uh come up to here come up to here that's good all right we're missing somebody right here uh right side uh in between george and ronda you two switch roger over here by them okay [Music] we celebrate veterans day and during this pow-wow we recognize and honor our veterans for the military service [Music] the pow-wow is just a time when people come together to celebrate they're honoring the tradition they're honoring that we are still here they will fly a u.s flag they'll carry in the u.s colors and they will recognize their veterans and honor them [Music] because they still feel that sense of gratitude that they're able to go and defend the united states as well as defend their communities and preserve our native american heritage they will also honor active duty soldiers that are getting ready to deploy it made me feel good to see these young people preparing and training up for deployment to a not too good place you know iraq and especially syria give them a round of applause for that beautiful brand entry here at the 42nd comanche indian veterans association veterans day celebration we sort of adopted this battalion of engineers we gave them the title of task force comanche and that's a pretty high honor they're going to carry our comanche flags into a war zone and represent not only their battalion but the comanche nation [Music] they had never seen anything like this in their life it was an opportunity and we welcome the opportunity for them to join in with our traditional ways our dances here you have an army unit that is deploying into harm's way and they felt like they had a connection that they wanted to draw from the comanche spirit and to be recognized as task force comanche before i deployed to korea they had a powwow for me an honor dance in my hometown and we danced we sang they recognized me [Music] it made me feel so proud that our comanche people gathered and then i went off feeling good [Music] people have asked me with the history of the comanche and the kiowa the government taking your land why did you go into the military well you know we lost our land once we're not going to lose it a second time it's still our land the white man has killed his game driven his tribe from their hunting ground and broken every treaty from just about the beginning of the united states itself the government has fought various wars against native nations and that's the irony here's a government that has at various times tried to exterminate or assimilate native americans destroy their culture take their land and yet here are native americans serving in the highest percentages of any race or ethnicity relative to their numbers in the u.s military [Music] there was one vet that i spoke to and i asked him why he enlisted and he said that his people had signed a peace and friendship treaty with the u.s government promising to protect the nation should it ever needed services and he said even though the united states has broken every treaty it ever negotiated i'm still obligating my end of the treaty [Music] native americans have fought in every war that the united states has been part of i have a relative who appears as an indian scout on the roles of general mancom who fought during the french and indian war there's a tradition and in literally every indian family of fighting for the united states the civil war the uh spanish-american war world war one world war ii korea vietnam even nowadays in afghanistan and iraq they have fought against the united states they have fought for the united states and they have fought against each other [Applause] people around the world when they think about a warrior they really have an image of the plains indian riding on a horse going into battle perhaps carrying a shield but certainly the bow scenarios i think that's really kind of fixed in people's minds around the world [Music] i think native people look at those images and we're kind of like that's not really us you know that's not really us we drive white men from prairie people had a stereotype of what a native looks like some of the other stereotypes that they had is that we could find our way anywhere in the woods without a map that we were expert at tracking and and navigating and finding the enemy and some of us couldn't find ourselves out of a wet paper bag when i was a tank commander everyone knew i was in the engine so i got to be the lead vehicle because i was engine i supposed to know where i'm going [Music] well i knew where i was going because i had a map and a compass some of them thought we were like geronimo we could shoot from miles away and get that target they try to put us in a box and they try to say you know this is how you guys should be this is how you should do it it's a stereotype americans have always seen native americans as just this group identity uh they don't recognize the fact that there were thousands of different native american nations before colonization and there are 573 recognized tribes today and they're very different they have different religions different economies different political structures different tribal traditions different histories they have different languages [Music] and so the motivations for why a native american man or woman would enlist in the military are also diverse from this primitive home a navajo chief has sent three sons to the army they're proud of their honor role 700 indian boys from one small county are serving with america's armed forces american indians loyal to their country i've been asked the question numerous times how can you belong to an army that was once responsible for committing genocide against your people this is our land before sacred wild that's our land these are our mountains the rivers within the four sacred mountains that's our river we want to protect it we want to preserve it for our family for our relatives for our children for the future generation the warrior culture in the late 1800s for all native americans was disappearing as the reservation system really made it unnecessary there were no more enemies to fight couldn't fight the united states because you're powerless against their might we were warriors after we came onto the reservations we were no longer warriors we weren't allowed to carry our weapons we weren't allowed to to do anything except what the government the government allowed and as the older generation that had known freedom begins to die off you'd think that pretty much that's going to be the end of it [Music] but with world war one we find that native americans enlisted in a tremendously large percentage higher than anyone else my grandfather actually enlisted before world war one and enlisted in the wisconsin national guard why he would willingly risk his life to protect the american constitution was something that i didn't really understand what i've come to know since is that he was primed for military service by his time in an indian boarding school where the environment was very militarized he drilled in a little cadet uniform with a wooden rifle every morning at five o'clock he marched to his dormitory he marched to the mess hall he marched to his classes and when world war one broke out men like my grandfather were primed to enter and enlist in world war one strange thing about world war one is that during this period a lot of native americans weren't us citizens yet it was the military service of the 12 to 15 000 native american men like my grandfather who served in world war one that inspired the us government to confer citizenship on these veterans but for the united states it's it's again it's a tremendous example of how assimilation has worked and how native americans are proud patriots i think world war ii really was the thing that kind of changed the perception of native peoples in americans eyes because we were war heroes on capitol hill this morning members of 33 native american tribes received congressional gold medals for their work as code talkers during world war one and world war ii code talkers used their native languages to send messages that the enemy could not decipher my name is peter mcdonald and i'm from t-snails past arizona that's near four corners i served in the united states marines during world war ii as a member of the navajo code talkers the first group that went in in 1942 29 of young navajos were recruited it was a top secret project the enemy in the pacific was breaking every military code that was being used by the army navy marines and air force there was no way to communicate without the enemy knowing what you're going to do or where you're going to be what day what hour and the location and there will be there with their submarine or their airplane blow you up very bad so they were looking for a code and they sought navajo language [Music] i went to a boarding school when you enter the boarding school the first thing they tell you don't ever talk navajo if you catch you're talking never they punish you they grab you by your hair and they stick that soap down in your mouth and watch that dirty word you just said spit it out oh vomit now wait a minute here they told us that we're no good and forget your language because your language is tradition tradition is an enemy to progress and all that now somehow they discovered that maybe navajo language will be something that would save the war in the pacific and it did the first group that went in developed 260 code words like code word for hand grenade for instance was namasi nummasi in navajo means potato why because hand grenade looks like a potato so if another navajo outside this top secret classroom hear us saying no mercy they think we're talking about french fries they were told everything you do in this top secret classroom must be subject to memory only you cannot take any notes with you into battle [Music] august 7 1942 first marine division landed on the island of guadalcanal with 13 of the navajo code talkers to test the coat that was just developed [Music] after guadalcanal bookendville after bookenville cape cluster new britain tarwa makin kawajalin in we talk saipan tinian guam palelu iwochimo okinawa every landing in the pacific navajo code was used it actually became an official united states military code to be treated and protected the same way of all other military codes that were in use at that time [Music] general van der griff sent work back to united states saying this navajo code is terrific the enemy never understood it he said we don't understand it either but it works send us some more navajos the u.s did everything it could to erase indian languages and then it turns out that the navajo language made a huge difference in the success in the pacific during world war ii and ever since then the u.s has been trying to recruit native americans there's a very famous photograph from world war ii of a menominee naval person in a full war bonnet which is wrong on so many levels since the you know the menomonee our woodland tribe didn't wear those kinds of planes headdresses he's on one knee he's got the rifle back he's posed and this was a very famous photograph that was used in a lot of recruitment materials and the military has been doing it ever since military recruiters have always found is a an ear that was open uh to joining the military because it fits so congruently with our our warrior culture and that warrior spirit in action military spends millions of dollars on nice glossy tv commercials there are those who choose a different path in life brochures pamphlets to bring in recruits if you go into recruiting offices in border towns near indian reservations you'll see warrior images native warrior images in those materials the us military understands that there's this warrior tradition in indian country and it's not afraid to use it they fight for country they fight for honor they fight to win do you have what it takes find out at goarmy.com warriors recruiters take advantage of the warrior tradition very effectively they can play off that really well they're trained to do this they'll talk about how the strong powerful tradition you have as warriors don't you want to keep that going you should sign up for the army or whatever branch they're from you don't really have to sell the military because they already want to be a part of it and there's such a strong lineage of native americans my mom was a recruiter and we were sitting at the dinner table one night and i said mom i want to join the army she kind of laughed i was like no i'm serious mom i want to join she sat me down and said you want to join let's get you a job you like she said you love art you love photography let's look and see what we can get you so she said i found a good safe job for you so i enlisted it as a combat cameraman she didn't catch the word combat in there she was just happy i had a job cameraman in the army she thought i was going to be in a photo lab nice and safe for me joining the military was about trying to turn a a new leaf trying to restart my life because i had been such a screw-up as a young man i had had legal troubles i'd gotten arrested a few times i was going nowhere i was at a dead-end job so for me it was a way to restart my life and to do it in a way that was meaningful joining the marine corps and coming out of the marine corps i was a different guy i was a different guy i was ready to go back to school i was ready to to start a new chapter for other native americans it's often the same thing they they want to start a new chapter in their life they want to reclaim that identity as a native warrior they want to reclaim their identity as native americans [Music] a lot of my uncles cousins relatives joined the service uh not only in wartime but in peacetime because it was it was an economic pursuit it was a way to get away from the reservation and to make money uh and to be able to provide for your family and so again you know that's kind of the warrior tradition to provide provide to to help out to make sure your community's in good shape we join the military out of pride and not financial necessity sometimes it may give a a resource out of poverty but it's not a complete solution in itself and a lot of times what we sacrifice to be in the military far outweighs any monetary benefit we may receive [Music] it is a way of earning respect to fight for the united states is also being recognized as a warrior and in this way not just by the united states government but also among your own community and sometimes the latter is more important than fighting for the united states government i think mainstream america can learn a lot from indian service beginning with the way native communities prepare their soldiers for service understanding that there's a spiritual component to war and a lot of people don't think about that but if you are going into a situation where you may lose your life or take the life of someone else there's nothing more spiritual than that when i was young we lived out in the country with just my grandpa and my grandma and i i was uh raised by my grandparents one day my grandfather came over and said which means grandson sit down i want to talk to you so i didn't want to because i wanted to go play but um i sat with him and after a while seemed like i can hear the birds singing out there i can hear a lot of other sounds and about an hour later after four times offering me the pipe he said grandson were done talking and he never once said one word was able to learn patience through that and so when i was in vietnam i thought it kind of saved my life a few times because we had to sit there and ambush for a long long time without moving you don't speak you're out in the forest and you listen to mother nature and you listen to everything that's happening around you and you listen to yourself in your soul because i was upfront so it kind of helped me out quite a bit he was getting me ready for things like that combat and stuff i didn't know at that time so that's how i learned silence is power i was uh the eyes and ears on the battlefield something that didn't seem right or stood out was wrong it would catch my eye and then i would start photographing it and the infantryman would pick up on it and then sometimes i would wonder in the back of my mind was it just the photography or was it part of my native culture and some of my traditions that was tuning me into the potential of something going wrong one of my more well-known photographs uh i shot during the battle in samara for operation baton rouge uh the the engineers had just blown the wall out and as the wall was coming down i was third in the stack two guys went through and then i went through and i turned around as i turned around stuff was still falling and three guys were coming through the wall and i was like that's the shot and it just got used over and over and over again it got picked up by newsweek got picked up by the washington post and other papers [Music] right before the battle fallujah which was in november 2004 in iraq um i remember we were preparing for battle so i joke i called my humvee my war pony my iron wore pony and so i started blessing it uh started marking it and smudging it i had my hawk feathers hanging up in there and my eagle feathers and so i was prepping for battle spiritually and getting myself mentally ready for the battle and that was a lot of our culture and traditions that we would do before battle is prepare ourselves to face the enemy during all of my overseas deployment my grandmother she would pray in the kaiwa language and she would place paint here here back my head here and here she called it her medicine i can remember incidents in vietnam where i could have been killed or seriously injured [Music] but for example i was standing in one spot i moved from that spot and a minute later a mortar round hit exactly where i was saying is that luck probably but i think it was my grandmother's purse i had three feathers that i carried with me on my on my person uh the entire time i had one eagle feather that i taped to my front plate on my vest and then i had another one that i taped to my back plate and then the third feather i had it tied on to the end of my weapon i was in a lot of heavy fire fights and that's i was i was never touched the yellow corn pollen blessed by a navajo medicine man before we leave for overseas the corn pollen is put into a longer buckskin bag with full corn pollen madison man blesses it saying when you get into a real tough situation in war take this and say your prayers for protection they tie this to their dog tag so i get into a real tough situation maybe bullets flying five to ten inches over their heads mortar shells exploding everywhere looks like not going to be there for another minute they untie this from the dog tag open it up take a pinch of it put it on your tongue take another pinch put it on top of your head take another one make an offering down in your foxhole there's that guy with us in the foxhole he would say hey chief what are you doing asking for help and protection he would say may i have some war is such a terribly traumatic experience and there are times when nothing can protect a warrior from the horrors of war you've agreed to allow yourself go from a person of peace to a person to an instrument of war and the toll that that takes on is incredible on the on the human psyche [Music] i wasn't the same person i was before i went to vietnam than i was when i came back [Music] uh i'll never forget the images of the 18 viet cong that was chilled i mean body parts arms legs half of their body it itches in your mind and you think about it sometimes you have bad dreams you have these flashbacks i wish that i could sleep one night for eight straight hours and i have it in 50 something years you know [Music] there's a lot of folks over there that are no longer on this earth because of what i had to do so that's hard to live with sometimes the ones that i actually the ones that i actually shot and seen fall i see them all the time even the toughest guy out there the strongest dude out there you know he tells you that it doesn't bother him but he's full of it i had ptsd there was times where i felt concerned about how i was dealing with it and i it's really important to recognize and be that warrior to reach out to say you need help and largely was my my tribe that helped me they want to make sure when you come back you have somewhere to come back to and to me that's part of being a warrior and luckily we have ceremonies traditionally that are set up just for that reason it's to bring those people back in to balance back into harmony back into connection with their home community so they don't feel displaced and they don't just continue to walk around with those wounds that are internal that are spiritual that never get resolved or remedied you can't just simply welcome a returning soldier back there's a period of intense reintegration where you have to reintroduce a soldier to his or her humanity and that if you don't do that you're putting the entire society at risk that's something that mainstream society can learn from indian country when i came home in 2005 in february i have a home powwow the copan paolo which is the delaware tribe and they had an honor ceremony for me and at that time i was presented with my honor blanket and my pawnee clothes i wasn't the only one who had something like that just about every native american come in chicago that i knew that served in vietnam their families did the same for them it was just the tradition that goes back to uh to the plains days you know honor the warriors some tribes honor before you go they do a dance for you before you go and other tribes will honor you when you come back [Music] a lot of tribes have they're not so much welcoming home ceremonies as they are purification ceremonies we go to powwows as veterans as a group we're around each other you know and we talk to each other you know i've never told any of my fellow veterans what i just told you about the dead bodies and uh but we know what we went through march 23rd 2003 lori pistowa was in the 507th maintenance company there were people missing in action people that were unaccounted for and lori was one of them earlier today an army maintenance unit was moving through south central iraq somehow they strayed from their position and encountered iraqi military forces a firefight ensued we can tell you that some u.s soldiers were killed some indeed captured now being held by the iraqis specialist lori piestewa a member of the hopi tribe and the 507th maintenance company was taken prisoner along with her battle buddy pfc jessica lynch lori died shortly thereafter in an iraqi hospital it was really hard to lose a daughter you never expect your children are going to go before you laurie is the first native american woman to die in all the wars that the united states has been in she's the first one to die in foreign soil the town is tuba city where lori's image can be found everywhere on the front page of the newspaper a picture of lori and her roommate jessica lynch whose rescue only a few days ago raised so much hope for the others including lori but it was not to be we feel that her purpose in life was to bring peace and unity to everybody and she's brought so many people together her legacy is to instill that in people that we need to be peaceful we need to work together her home state of arizona renamed [ __ ] peak in the phoenix mountains as piestewa peak and every year the lori piestewa national native american games is held which brings participants from across the [Music] country in our culture it is not common for women to be warriors it is not common for women to go out and fight but laurie did women can serve in limited combat roles although that's really debatable if you're driving a truck full of armaments and you're in a convoy as laurie piestewa was for example you are seeing very active combat and and perhaps even paying the ultimate price as she did if you look at every photograph i see of laura she's smiling she's always smiling lori loved life [Music] she also i think was willing to give up her life to have somebody else be able to live and have the freedoms that we have in indian country lori piestewa is held up as a symbol of the the kind of bravery and sacrifice that native americans have made um and contributed to the us military since there was a united states being a woman not just a native american woman but woman in a military it's been difficult i felt like i've had to do twice as much work to prove myself as an equal i think it will be a long time before some of the tribes except women as veterans i know that there are some of the warrior societies that still to this day won't accept women into their groups and they may offer them a separate group but they won't allow them to stand side by side with the mail even though we are able to do the same jobs it is about defending what we love it is about being humble it is about being respectful of all life and then also it is about courage and courage is not muscle and strength it is about standing up for what is right and that is um the warrior way there's more than one way to be a warrior you can be a diplomat warrior you can help people build infrastructure to bring roads and bridges and into their communities i had built a rapport with the afghan security forces and the commander for that unit he wanted to ask some questions about me and so he said ask her where is she from and i said i'm native american and he got quiet and then he just broke out in this excitement and says she's redman and you know around the room you know you're hearing she's red man she's red man she's red man and he says what tribe are you and i said well i'm comanche and his response was comanche you know like there was this reverence this deep respect they had and then i said um and then i'm also apache and no sooner than i said that i was apache they yelled out geronimo and and it literally brought tears to my eyes and it still does because i said do you know about geronimo so then the colonel calms them down and then in that quiet stillness of a moment he says something very powerful and he says we thought they wiped you out and i said no we are still here [Music] in 2004 i was deployed to iraq with the 120th combat heavy engineers four other females was in the tent with me and out of all the four of us we were all choctaw the chaplain was looking at her tribal site in the united states and saw a powwow happening and called me in and i just happened to ask her could you think we could put on a powwow here i didn't think nothing of it i mean we're in a combat zone and that's how it started it wasn't a powwow like in the states where everybody was dressed in regalia and everything was made from things back home but things here in iraq the drum was made out of a 55-gallon oil drum cut in half they're stick balls that we were using they were old broom handles that were cut and we used parachute cords to make the netting [Music] i wouldn't have thought ever that they were going to allow me to do that so you know think big or go home so the powwow was a big event we introduced uh the idea of a native american event slowly by playing games they can take their weapons set them down for a few minutes play tomahawk throws [Music] blow darts or indian marbles indian stickball [Music] while we're playing stickball a lot of the non-natives probably thought we were crazy we came under a mortar attack but instead of running for cover we just kept playing stickball you know stickball's serious game you can't you can't leave it i believe that having a powwow in a combat zone sends the message not only to native americans and non-native americans but the soldiers and non-soldiers alike that hear about the powwow that the native americans are still very much alive they're still very much a part of the world [Music] the combat cameraman in me wanted to document it because i've never heard of a powwow in a combat zone and sure enough it's the first one that was ever documented and the first one that's ever known to be a full-blown pow-wow in a combat zone we all can learn from each other regardless of what size what shape what ideal what thought what tribe indian non-indian what we are that we can communicate we can help each other we can learn [Music] we want them to know us we want to know them and having that pow-wow help them understand what made the powwow even more unique here was a government that tried to exterminate us tried to do away with us and now they were allowing us to embrace our culture and have this huge celebration in iraq and celebrating our warrior traditions and just our basic traditions and that made it phenomenal that made it unique [Music] i think the definition of warrior is changing in indian country i think we appreciate the service of of anyone in the u.s military whether they're native or not but at the same time there's this questioning now that i see on the part of of younger native people asking well you know do we have to define warrior as combat or participation in the u.s military can we think about warrior traditions differently can we say that someone who is willing to put their life on the line at an environmental protest are they warriors a lot of native people would say they are on the high plains of north dakota a conflict is unfolding this is standing rock where thousands of native americans have gathered to protest against a planned oil pipeline that will run under the nearby missouri river in 2017 with the emerging of the pipeline protest in north dakota indian people and environmentalists became known as water protectors and so we have that kind of contradiction in that indians who had fought for the united states are now fighting against the united states government at the same time then veterans come to support native people and many of them are american indian veterans and the encampment at standing rock grows from a few thousand to maybe is ten to twelve thousand that would be the largest gathering for an indian cause in history when i got out of the military when i retired nobody told me that i had to stop protecting and i felt like there's more that we can do in talking with a lot of other native americans and non-native americans just all veterans that actually made the trip for veterans for standing rock they all felt the same way that these were the people we were supposed to protect and a lot of our military members when they go back home they get involved in activism because they are using their skill sets to protect and defend their people so i i think that's why we had so many veterans that were at standing rock being at standing rock is consistent with the warrior tradition we're supposed to protect those that can't protect themselves we're supposed to stand in the gap in face danger it was really kind of showing that hey we had fought for the united states military we had fought for this country and now we're doing the right thing why don't you do the right thing too and stop the pipeline because it's harming the environment it's dishonoring the legal rights of the standing rocks through people and things need to be corrected the water protectors at standing rock ultimately lost the pipeline did get built but they managed to ignite a solidarity movement that many of us haven't seen in a long long time and that really is the warrior tradition [Music] out of powwow when i see babies there's just a sense of hope a hope for the next generation that's going to come along and they're going to embrace our culture they're going to learn these songs you know that's a new dancer coming in that's a new singer coming in and also the potential that that's a new veteran that's a new warrior that's going to learn the warrior ways right now my nephew is in the air force he's serving in okinawa japan when he comes home on leave again i'm going to pass these two feathers onto him so that he can carry the tradition on and then hopefully one day he will pass them on to someone else in our family to continue our traditions as warriors and the traditions of the feathers being passed from one warrior to another warrior [Laughter] i'll never forget that feeling the first time you hear the drum [Applause] because even though we had come home and gotten off the plane and had started to resettle with our families and you know you know you're alive but it's not until you hear the drum and they're putting in your hand a staff an eagle feather the american flag that you actually feel alive you feel alive your heart is beating with the beat of that drum and reminding you that you made it back that you're here that you're alive and you have a purpose [Music] [Music] is my [Music]

Channel: Buffalo Toronto Public Media

Views: 319,072

Keywords: WNED PBS, WNED, PBS, Buffalo Toronto Public Media, Buffalo, Toronto, Public Media, WNED PBS Productions, warrior, tradition, Native Americans, indigenous, healing, nation, America, war, code talkers, Comanche Kiowa, pow wows, ceremonies, veterans, WWII, Vietnam, Iraq, Asepermy, Mooney, Boers, military, Army, National Guard, Navy, Air Force, Pearl Harbor, McDonald, Montemayor, Perez, Lakota, Vanas, soldier, Apache, Comanche Indians Veterans Association, Korean, WWI, Navajo code, Piestewa, women warriors, Fixico

Id: SGAEfijaqiY

Length: 54min 51sec (3291 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021