Gallery
Why We Serve explores more than two centuries of images relating to Native Americans and their service in the United States Armed Forces. Learn about Native service members through their paintings and photographs.
Jesse T. Hummingbird (Cherokee, b. 1952), Veterans, 2016. Acrylic on canvas, 101.4 x 76 x 3.5 cm. NMAI 26/9780
Oklahoma Historical Society
American Indian soldiers of Company E, 142nd Infantry, 36th Division at the Chateau de Vaus, France, during World War I. Choctaw members of this unit became the first code talkers, using their Native language to subvert enemy communications.
Teko Photography
Flag bearer Misty “Iglág Th˅okáhe Wiŋ” Lakota (Oglala Lakota) leads Grand Entry at the 2018 Georgetown University Powwow in Washington, DC.
Zonnie Gorman, courtesy of the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
Carl Gorman (Navajo, 1907–1998), The Black Pot Drum of the Enemy Way, 1971.
For Diné (Navajo) people, the Enemy Way ceremony heals and restores balance, or hózhó, and counters the negative effects of sustained proximity to death. One Diné veteran received a Blessing Way ceremony before he left for Vietnam and an Enemy Way ceremony upon his return home. He reflected, “When I got back I had a lot of trouble. My mother even called in one of our medicine men. It cost them but my folks had an Enemy Way done for me. It’s a pretty big thing . . . It snapped me out of it.” Both customary practice and contemporary research suggest a correlation between resolving post-traumatic stress and participation in ceremonies connected with warfare and healing.
Courtesy of Jerry Walker
Naluahine Kaukaopua (on right), age 89, and James Kekahuna (both Native Hawaiian) demonstrate lua, a traditional Native Hawaiian martial art. Historically, lua masters were highly respected members of elite armies. On this occasion, Naluahine demonstrated and shared a technique that involved ‘ai (holds) specific to the Kona area. Kona, Big Island of Hawai‘i, July 1950.
© 2014 Nicole Tung
Members of the Ton-Kon-Gah, or Kiowa Black Leggings Society, discuss what it means to be a veteran before the start of a ceremony in memory of those who fought. The tipi depicts battles in which Kiowas participated and lists the names of all Kiowas killed in combat since World War II. Near Anadarko, Oklahoma, 2014.
Johann Ewald Diary, Volume II, Joseph P. Tustin Papers, Special Collections, Harvey A. Andruss Library, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
“An Indian of the Stockbridge Tribe,” Kingsbridge, New York, 1778. Sketch by Lieutenant General Johann von Ewald, Schleswig Jäger Corps (1744–1813). Pen and ink.
The Stockbridge Indians of western Massachusetts, a refugee community of Mohican, Housatonic, and Wappinger peoples, fought bravely for the cause of independence during the American Revolution. This sketch, by Captain Johann von Ewald, a Hessian officer who fought for Britain, depicts what a Stockbridge warrior would have worn and carried into battle.
Oneida Indian Nation
Polly Cooper (Oneida) accompanied Oneida troops who brought food and supplies to relieve starving American soldiers during the winter of 1777–78 at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. She gave the army white corn and taught them how to prepare it. Cooper remained at Valley Forge through the winter as General Washington’s cook. For her efforts, she was gifted a shawl by the officers’ wives, which still resides in the hands of her descendants today. Oneidas participated in battles prior to and after Valley Forge as scouts, spies, and soldiers, giving significant aid to the revolutionary cause.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Betty A. and Lloyd G. Schermer
John William Gear, Push-ma-ta-ha, 1838. Copy after Henry Inman and Charles Bird King, hand-colored lithograph on paper.
During the War of 1812, Choctaw Chief Pushmataha (ca. 1760–1824) and his warriors engaged and routed anti-American Muscogees, known as the Red Sticks, and joined U.S. forces under the command of General Andrew Jackson to defeat the British at the Battle of New Orleans. In recognition of his service, the United States presented Pushmataha with a full-dress military uniform, such as the one shown here. When he died in 1824 during a diplomatic visit to Washington, more than two thousand people followed the cortege to his funeral at Congressional Cemetery.
Photo by Mathew Brady, National Archives photo no. 524444
General Ulysses S. Grant (fourth from left) and his staff, including Lieutenant Colonel Ely S. Parker (second from the right), late spring, 1864.
Photo by Mathew Brady, National Archives photo no. 529376
Ely S. Parker, 1860–65.
At the Confederate surrender at Appomattox in 1865, Ely S. Parker (Seneca, 1828–1895) was the highest-ranking American Indian in the Union army, a lieutenant colonel. As General Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary, he drafted the terms of surrender. A popular story states that Confederate General Robert E. Lee, noticing that Parker was an American Indian, remarked, “I am glad to see one real American here.” Parker later recalled, “I shook his hand and said, 'We are all Americans.'”
Photo by De Lancey W. Gill. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution [NAA INV 06197600]
William Terrill Bradby, dressed traditionally and holding a club, October 1899.
William Terrill Bradby (Pamunkey, 1833–?) and other men from Virginia’s Pamunkey and Mattaponi Nations served as river pilots, land guides, and spies for the Union army during the 1862 Peninsular Campaign. They piloted steamers, tugboats, gunboats, and torpedo boats during the remainder of the Civil War.
Photo by Mathew Brady, National Archives photo no. 529026
Stand Watie, 1860–65.
Stand Watie (or Degataga, Cherokee, 1806–1871) was elected principal chief of the Confederate-aligned Cherokee and awarded the rank of brigadier general—the only American Indian to achieve that rank in the Civil War—as commander of the Indian Cavalry Brigade, which included the First and Second Cherokee Cavalry, the Creek Squadron, the Osage Battalion, and the Seminole Battalion.
Civil war photographs, 1861–1865, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Wounded American Indian Union sharpshooters rest beneath a tree at Brompton, the home of John L. Marye, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, May 14, 1864. Five days earlier, the First Michigan Sharpshooters, including Company K, had been heavily engaged at the Ni River during the Battle of the Spotsylvania Courthouse; the casualties were evacuated to Fredericksburg. Captain Edwin V. Andress is sitting under the tree facing forward; though non-Native, Andress spoke a number of Michigan Indian language dialects and recruited many of the Native sharpshooters. Sergeant Thomas “Ne-o-de-geshik” Ke Chittigo (Chippewa, 1836–1916), wounded on May 12, is seen standing to the right of the tree.
Photo Lot 24 SPC Sw Apache NAA 4877 Baker & Johnston 02028600, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
General George Crook, wearing his campaign outfit and riding his mule in Arizona Territory, 1885. With him is Chiricahua Apache scout Ba-Keitz-Ogie (Yellow Coyote, ca. 1855–1893), at left, and Alchesay (1853–1928), a White Mountain Apache scout who earned the Medal of Honor during Crook’s campaign against the Chiricahua. Alchesay participated in Geronimo’s surrender to Crook in March 1886, serving as the Chiricahua Apache leader’s appointed translator.
NMAI P06650
Curley (Apsáalooke [Crow], 1856–1923), also known as Curly, Shi-Shia. Curley was one of six Crow scouts assigned to Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer’s command when the men of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry rode to their deaths at the Little Bighorn, in Montana, on June 25, 1876. Although Curley did not participate in the battle, journalists frequently later hounded him for details about “Custer’s Last Stand.”
BAE GN 02899A 06465400, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Scouts from the Warm Springs Reservation in north-central Oregon at ease during the “Modoc War” (1872–73). The men were recruited by the United States Army to pursue a group of Modoc people who had left their reservation in Oregon and returned to their homelands in northern California.
Stereograph by Strohmeyer & Wyman, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Bankston Johnson, 1898.
Bankston Johnson (Choctaw, 1862?–?) was a trooper in Theodore Roosevelt’s First Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, popularly known as the Rough Riders.
Marquette University Archives, Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions Records, ID 09-160-07
Father Craft and four members of the Congregation of American Sisters at Pinar del Rio, Cuba, about 1899. Left to right: Annie Pleets (Sister Mary Bridget), Ellen Clark (Sister Mary Gertrude), Father Francis M. Craft, Josephine Two Bears (Sister Mary Joseph), and Susie Bordeaux (Mother Mary Anthony).
Four Lakota nuns who served during the Spanish–American War are the first known Native American army nurses. The women belonged to the Congregation of American Sisters on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, founded by Father Francis M. Craft. It was Craft who offered the services of the four nuns to the war effort in 1898. The nuns were much beloved by the soldiers and praised by the Surgeon General as “the only Sisters who came with the Army to Cuba, and remained.”
Courtesy of Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries, Wenner 110
William Pollock (Pawnee, 1870–1899), one of Roosevelt’s most respected Rough Riders, ca. 1898.
One of eight Pawnee men to enlist in the Rough Riders, Pollock fought gallantly during the famous charge up San Juan Hill. Returning home to Oklahoma, Pollock was honored as a warrior by his people, who gifted him with horses at a community gathering. Barely six months later, at age twenty-eight, Pollock succumbed to pneumonia, complicated by malaria contracted in Cuba. Theodore Roosevelt expressed his condolences to the family, noting that Pollock “conferred honor by his conduct not only upon the Pawnee tribe, but upon the American army and nation.”
Photo by Hopkins. Courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society
Joseph Oklahombi (Choctaw, 1895–1960), right, with John Golombie (Chickasaw) and Czarina Colbert Conlan (Choctaw/Chickasaw) at Oklahombi’s home. Near Wright City, Oklahoma, May 12, 1921.
Joseph Oklahombi was the most highly decorated Native American serviceman during World War I. He received a Silver Citation Star and the Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military honor for gallantry, after he and twenty-three other men rushed a German stronghold near Saint-Etienne in October 1918, capturing 171 prisoners and killing about 79.
Courtesy of John Moses
Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture (Six Nations of the Grand River, 1890–1996), 1919.
Edith Monture was the first Native Canadian registered nurse. After Indian Act restrictions of her era prevented her from pursuing professional training in Canada, she sought nurse’s training in the United States. In 1917, at the age of twenty-seven, she volunteered for the U.S. Medical Corps and served in a hospital in France, treating soldiers who had been shot or gassed. She was the only Native woman among the fourteen Canadian nurses who served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War I.
Mathers Museum of World Cultures, Indiana University
Amado Garcia (Acoma Pueblo), Camp Dix, New Jersey, May 17, 1919.
Amado Garcia enlisted in the United States Army on June 3, 1918, in Lamar, Colorado. He was decorated with the French Croix de Guerre with Gilt Star for his actions in Fismes, France. With two other men from his unit, Garcia advanced three hundred yards through barbed wire under heavy fire, capturing enemy guns, and returned unwounded to Allied lines.
National Archives photo no. 533744
American Indian students from Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Hog Island Shipyard, Pennsylvania, September 4, 1918.
Native people served the war effort in many different ways, including working in defense industries. These students from the Carlisle boarding school in Pennsylvania built ships during World War I.
Mathers Museum of World Cultures, Indiana University
Choctaw telephone squad, returned from fighting in World War I. Camp Merritt, New Jersey, June 7, 1919. From left: Corporal Solomon Bond Louis, Private Mitchell Bobb, Corporal James Edwards, Corporal Calvin Wilson, Private Joseph (James) Davenport, Captain Elijah W. Horner. In addition to Choctaw language speakers, Ho-Chunks, Eastern Cherokees, Comanches, Cheyennes, Yankton Sioux, and Osages were among the Native men who served as code talkers during World War I.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma State Senate
Wayne Cooper, Indian Code Talkers, 2000. Oil on canvas.
The painting depicts code talker Charles Chibitty (Comanche) after landing at Utah Beach during World War II.
National Archives photo no. 127-MN-69889-B
Navajo code talkers Corporal Henry Bahe Jr. and Private First Class George H. Kirk. Bougainville, South Pacific, December 1943.
Dispersed across six marine divisions fighting in the Pacific, the Navajo radiomen saw action in many pivotal battles, including Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Tarawa, Makin, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
Meskwaki code talkers, February 1941. Top, left to right: Judie Wayne Wabaunasee, Melvin Twin, Dewey Roberts Sr., Mike Wayne Wabaunasee; Bottom: Edward Benson, Frank Jonas Sanache Sr., Willard Sanache, Dewey Youngbear. The men were assigned to the 168th Infantry, 34th Red Bull Division and were sent to North Africa, where they participated in the attacks on Italy under heavy shelling. Three of the men were captured and confined to Italian and German prison camps.
National Archives photo no. 520748
The historic photograph by Joe Rosenthal, taken on February 23, 1945, depicts five marines and a navy corpsman raising a U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi during the battle for the island of Iwo Jima in World War II. Corporal Ira Hamilton Hayes (Pima, 1923–1955) remains one of the best-known American Indians to serve in World War II. In 1945, Hayes was one of six servicemen who raised the American flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the South Pacific—a moment captured in a celebrated photograph (Hayes appears on the far left). The men became national heroes.
National Archives photo no. 519164
Ira Hayes, age nineteen, at the United States Marine Corps Parachute Training School, where he was dubbed Chief Falling Cloud. San Diego, California, 1943.
National Archives photo no. 111-SC207745 (Album 1469)
As soldiers of the 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions of the Seventh United States Army arrived, prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp rejoiced in their freedom by raising a homemade American flag. Dachau, Germany, April 30, 1945.
The 45th Infantry Division, known as the Thunderbirds for their distinctive insignia, became one of America’s most acclaimed World War II combat units. American Indians made up about one-fifth of the 45th, including three who received the Medal of Honor: Jack Montgomery (Cherokee, 1917–2002), Van T. Barfoot (Choctaw, 1919–2012), and Ernest Childers. General George Patton said to the Thunderbirds, “You are one of the best, if not the best, divisions in the history of American arms.”
Grace Thorpe collection (NMAI.AC.085), negative box 8, item 19, NMAI
Grace Thorpe (Sac and Fox, 1921–2008) at work in General MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, in December 1945.
The daughter of famed athlete Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox, 1888–1953), Grace served in the WACs as a recruiter before being sent overseas to New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan in 1944. Corporal Thorpe was later awarded the Bronze Star for her service in the Battle of New Guinea. Following the end of the war, Thorpe remained in Japan and worked at General MacArthur’s headquarters as chief of the Recruitment Section, Department of Army Civilians. After returning home to Oklahoma, she served as a tribal district court judge, health commissioner, and activist.
National Archives photo no. 535876
Marine Corps Women Reservists, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, October 16, 1943. From left: Minnie Spotted Wolf (Blackfoot), Celia Mix (Potawatomi), and Viola Eastman (Chippewa).
World War II war bonds poster featuring work by Native artists from the Santa Fe Indian School, 1942. Made by Eva Mirabal (Taos Pueblo, 1920–1968), Ben Quintana (Cochiti Pueblo, 1923–1944), and Charles Pushetonequa (Sauk and Fox, 1915–1987) for the Government Printing Office. Ink on paper, 95.7 × 60.9 cm. NMAI 26/9677
Eva Mirabal of Taos Pueblo served as an artist in the WACs where she worked on murals and created the comic strip “G.I. Gertie.” After completing her service, Mirabal used her G.I. benefits to study at the Taos Valley Art School.
University of Alaska Museum of the North, UA1969-007-001. Photographer Karinna Gomez.
Magnus Colcord “Rusty” Heurlin (1895–1986), Alaska Territorial Guard poster, ca. 1942.
This artwork was used nationwide as a war-bond-drive poster.
Ernest H. Gruening Papers, 1914-[1959–1969] 1974, Alaska & Polar Regions Collections, Archives, University of Alaska Fairbanks
A military officer swearing in four Alaska Territorial Guardsmen at noon for an assignment in Barrow, Alaska, on the shore of the Arctic Ocean.
National Archives photo no. DHBR-9041
Residents of Alaska’s Pribilof Islands, located in the Bering Sea between the United States and Russia, gaze at their homes as the USS Delarof pulls away from the dock at Saint Paul Island in 1942. In response to Japanese attacks on the Aleutian Islands, including the seizure of Attu and Kiska, U.S. authorities evacuated the islands’ Aleut people. Ushered aboard cramped transport ships, the displaced families were transported to southeastern Alaska, where they were resettled in fish canneries, abandoned mine buildings, and other substandard and unsanitary quarters. Approximately 100 of the 881 interned evacuees died by war’s end.
Ernest H. Gruening Papers, 1914-[1959–1969] 1974, Alaska & Polar Regions Collections, Archives, University of Alaska Fairbanks
A group of about fifty people, possibly the ATG, posing for a winter photograph in Barrow. The military men appear to be from the United States Navy.
Photo by Horace Poolaw, 45POW29 © Estate of Horace Poolaw
Honor dance welcoming home Pascal Cleatus Poolaw Sr. (right, holding the American flag) after his service in the Korean War. To his right are members of the Kiowa War Mothers. Carnegie, Oklahoma, ca. 1952. Poolaw (Kiowa, 1922–1967) remains the most decorated American Indian soldier in history, having earned forty-two medals and citations during three wars: World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
Photo courtesy of Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell
Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Northern Cheyenne, b. 1933) shares a laugh with a young South Korean man during his service in the United States Air Force in the Korean War.
Vets Incorporated, Wahpeton, ND
Master Sergeant Woodrow Wilson Keeble, ca. 1955.
A veteran of World War II, Keeble (Dakota Sioux, 1917–1982) volunteered for duty in Korea because, as he put it, “Somebody has to teach these kids how to fight.” Known in his community as a gentle soul, Keeble was also a ferocious front-line warrior who risked his life to save his fellow soldiers during one of the last major U.S. offensives of the Korean War. For his actions, Keeble was decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross, the Purple Heart, and the Bronze Star. In 2008, twenty-six years after his death, Keeble was awarded the Medal of Honor “for conspicuous gallantry . . . at the risk of his life, above and beyond the call of duty.”
Courtesy Debbie Emhoolah
John Emhoolah, ca. 1950
John Emhoolah (Kiowa/Arapaho, b. 1929) was one of five brothers who served in the military. Upon his return from the Korean War, he became active in the fight for Native nations’ treaty rights.
Courtesy of Harvey Pratt
Harvey Pratt (Cheyenne and Arapaho, b. 1941) holds a Naga knife—a Southeast Asian knife used for cutting through vegetation—during the camouflage and evasion portion of ambush training for his service in Vietnam, 1963.
CD-33; Gift of Kenneth French Estate, 2000; Courtesy of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM; Joyce Cannon Yi, Executor of the T. C. Cannon Estate.
T. C. Cannon (Caddo/Kiowa, 1946–1978), On Drinkin’ Beer in Vietnam, 1971. Lithograph on paper, 48 × 76 cm. Collection of Museum of Contemporary Native Art.
This print depicts the artist and his friend from home, Kirby Feathers (Ponca), at a Vietnamese bar. Though stationed just miles apart, they only met up once while in Vietnam. Cannon was conflicted by his service; a symbol of that conflict—a mushroom cloud—appears in the background. Cannon was a member of the Kiowa Ton-Kon-Gah, or Black Leggings Warrior Society.
Courtesy Donna Loring
Donna Loring, 1966.
Loring (Penobscot, b. 1948) served in 1967 and 1968 as a communications specialist at Long Binh Post in Vietnam, where she processed casualty reports from throughout Southeast Asia. She was the first female police academy graduate to become a police chief in Maine and served as the Penobscots’ police chief from 1984 to 1990. In 1999, Maine governor Angus King commissioned her to the rank of colonel and appointed her his advisor on women veterans’ affairs.
Potawatomi Traveling Times
Ernie Wensaut (Forest County Potawatomi, b. ca. 1945) checking his gear before a patrol mission near the Cambodian border in the highlands of Vietnam in March 1967. A member of Company C, 2nd Battalion, 10th Infantry, 1st Division (also known as the “Big Red One”), Wensaut was an M-60 machine gunner whose weapon, nicknamed “The Pig,” fired 500 to 600 rounds per minute.
Courtesy of Chuck Boers
Sergeants Sam Stitt (Choctaw) and Chuck Boers (Lipan Apache), who discovered a shared Native heritage while serving in the army, pose next to their artwork in An Najaf, Iraq, in 2004.
Photo by Chuck Boers
Soldiers from the United States Army’s 120th Engineer Combat Battalion, posing with the Cherokee Nation flag. The photo was taken during the powwow events held at Al Taqaddum Air Base, Iraq, September 17 and 18, 2004.
During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 120th Engineer Combat Battalion had the highest proportion of American Indians—20 percent—of any military unit in the combat zone. Part of the Oklahoma National Guard and successor to the famous Thunderbirds of World War II, the 120th was ordered into service in 2003. The unit was awarded a meritorious commendation for its participation in the War on Terror and for its role in fighting in Afghanistan.
Drum, titled Desert Thunder, and drumsticks used in a two-day powwow at Al Taqaddum Air Base near Fallujah, Iraq, 2004. Made by 120th Engineer Combat Battalion. Metal, wood, hide, twine, nylon cord, adhesive tape, plastic, nails; 45 × 61 × 62 cm. (drum); length 49, 49, and 60 cm. (drumsticks). Gift of Sergeant Debra K. Mooney and 120th Engineer Combat Battalion. NMAI 26/5148
© 2014 Nicole Tung
The Native American Women Warriors leading the grand entry during a powwow in Pueblo, Colorado, June 14, 2014. From left: Sergeant First Class Mitchelene BigMan (Apsáalooke [Crow]/Hidatsa), Sergeant Lisa Marshall (Cheyenne River Sioux), Specialist Krissy Quinones (Apsáalooke), and Captain Calley Cloud (Apsáalooke), with Tia Cyrus (Apsáalooke) behind them. The organization, founded by Mitchelene BigMan in 2012, raises awareness about Native American women veterans and provides resources for support services in health, employment, and education.
Bob Bell / USCG
Master Chief Melvin Kealoha Bell (Native Hawaiian, 1920–2018), performing a final inspection at his retirement ceremony following twenty years of active service (1938–1958), Boston, Massachusetts, December 31, 1958.
Born in Hilo, Hawai‘i, Bell learned his mechanical and electrical skills from his father. Later, as radioman for the Coast Guard, Petty Officer Bell learned communications and naval intelligence work while serving at Diamond Head Lighthouse on O‘ahu. When the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7, 1941, Bell was on duty. He was the first to radio warnings to commercial vessels and military installations. After the attack, Bell focused on the war effort as a specialist in naval communications intelligence with the Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC). This work was critical to breaking Japanese codes and securing victories in the Pacific theater. While in the Coast Guard, Bell became the first Pacific Islander to become a chief petty officer, and was the first non-white coastguardsman to achieve the rank of master chief. After twenty years of active duty, he continued another forty-five as a civilian Coast Guard employee, finally retiring at age eighty-four with sixty-five years of service, one of the longest military careers in U.S. history.
Manuel Hernandez
Manuel “Chief” Hernandez (Barona Band of Mission Indians), December 2001. Shortly after 9/11, West Point graduate Hernandez deployed to Karshi-Khanabad, Uzbekistan, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. This remote location was the staging point for several early military operations into Afghanistan.
Photo by Alan Karchmer for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian
The National Native American Veterans Memorial was developed in consultation with tribal communities throughout the United States and designed by artist Harvey Pratt, a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran, and Butzer Architects and Urbanism.
STEPHEN PINGRY / Tulsa World
Marine Corps veteran Debra Wilson (Oglala Lakota) addresses a panel from the NMAI about her vision for the National Native American Veterans Memorial during a public forum at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tulsa in Catoosa, Oklahoma, 2016.
NMAI
Eric Birdinground (Apsáalooke [Crow]) speaks at the National Native American Veterans Memorial consultation at Crow Agency, Montana, July 29, 2016.
© Abraham Farrar
Harvey Pratt, 2019.
Pratt is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and a Southern Cheyenne peace chief, in addition to being a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran and artist.
After enlisting, Pratt was assigned to the Marine Corps Military Police in Okinawa, where he volunteered for special duty. He spent an additional two months in training, then seven months in Vietnam guarding the air base at Da Nang and helping to support helicopter squadrons in recovering pilots who had been shot down.
In 1965, when his enlistment ended, Pratt joined the Midwest City, Oklahoma, Police Department. The first drawing of a suspect he made from a witness description led to an arrest and conviction in a homicide. In 1972, he joined the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) and retired as an assistant director in 1992, but he continued to serve until 2017 as a forensic artist.