(gentle 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.

- [Elizabeth] 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.

Those feathers carried with me my ancestors.

They had been to World War I, they had been World War II, they had been to Korea, Vietnam, and as I was carrying that I felt like I had my family with me to protect me.

(singing in foreign language) Being a warrior's not necessarily about going out and killing people.

It's about keeping the peace as well and making sure that our traditions and cultures are staying in line with our values, protecting our land, our family, our community.

And that's part of the warrior tradition.

(drums tapping) (singing in foreign language) (cannon booming) (artillery firing) - I've always wanted to be a soldier.

I didn't want to be anything else.

I wanted to be a soldier.

(gentle music) 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 in 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 three 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 Kiowa and Comanche heritage.

I wanted to be a warrior.

(somber 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 I.

And then I had my uncles served 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, what it meant to be a warrior.

(gentle music) (birds chirping) - 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.

(drums tapping) We have the Comanche Indians Veterans Associations Court of Honor.

The highlight of that memorial is a life-sized statue dedicated to our Comanche code talkers of World War II.

It's called a Spirit Talker.

The Comanche Court of Honor that has about 1,200 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 the 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.

- [Elizabeth] I remember going to powwows growing up and seeing the opening ceremony and the veterans coming in (singing in foreign language) and I always wanted to be a part of that.

- George, come up to here.

Come up to here.

That's good.

All right, we're missing somebody right here.

Right by that, in between George and Rhonda.

You two switch.

Roger over here, by them, okay.

(singing in foreign language) We celebrate Veterans Day and during this powwow, we recognize and honor our veterans for their military service.

(singing in foreign language) - The powwow 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 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.

- [Lanny] It made me feel good to see these young people preparing and training up for deployment to a not-too-good place, Iraq and especially Syria.

(dramatic music) - [Announcer] Give 'em a round of applause for that beautiful grand entry here at the 42nd Comanche Indian Veterans Association Veterans Day Celebration.

- [Man] Let's go boys!

- 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 flag into a war zone and represent not only their battalion, but the Comanche Nation.

- [Man] What have we got?

- [Man] Halt!

- [Lanny] They had never seen anything like this in their life.

It was an opportunity and we welcomed the opportunity, for them to join in with our traditional ways, our dances.

(singing in foreign language) - 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.

It made me feel so proud that our Comanche people gathered, And then I went off feeling good.

People have asked me with the history of the Comanche and the Kiowa, 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.

- [Announcer] The white man has killed his game, driven his tribe from their hunting ground, and broken every treaty.

(men shouting) - 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 is 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.

(somber music) There was one vet that I spoke to and I asked him why he enlisted.

(somber music) 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 need its 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."

(singing in foreign language) Native Americans have fought in every war that the United States have been part of.

I have a relative who appears as an Indian scout on the rolls of General Montcalm who fought during the French and Indian War.

(singing in foreign language) - There's a tradition and, in literally every Indian family, of fighting for the United States.

- The Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, 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.

(speaking in foreign language) People around the world, when they think about warrior, they really have an image of the Plains Indian, riding on a horse, going into battle, perhaps carrying a shield, but certainly the bows and arrows.

And I think that's really kind of fixed in people's minds around the world.

(speaking in foreign language) - 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 Man 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 navigating and finding the enemy.

And some of us couldn't find ourselves out of wet paper bag.

- When I was a tank commander, everyone knew I was an Indian.

So I got to be the lead vehicle.

Because I was Indian, I was supposed to know where I'm going.

(guns firing) Well, I knew where I was going 'cause 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.

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.

(upbeat drum music) - Different tribal traditions, different histories, they have different languages.

And so the motivations for why a Native American man or woman would enlist in the military are also diverse.

- [Announcer] From this primitive home a Navajo chief has sent three sons to the Army.

They're proud of their honor roll.

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 questions numerous times.

How can you belong to an army that was once responsible for committing genocide against your people?

(somber music) - This is our land.

The four sacred mountain, that's our land.

These are our mountains.

The rivers within that 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 generations.

(gentle music) - [Jeffrey] 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.

You 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 do anything except what 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.

But with World War I, we find that Native Americans enlisted in a tremendously large percentage, higher than anyone else.

- My grandfather actually enlisted before World War I 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 5:00 o'clock.

He marched to his dormitory.

He marched to the mess hall.

He marched to his classes.

And when World War I broke out, men like my grandfather were primed to enter and enlist in World War I.

(guns firing) - The strange thing about World War I is that during this period a lot of Native Americans weren't U.S. citizens yet.

- [Patty] It was the military service of the 12 to 15,000 Native American men like my grandfather who served in World War I that inspired the U.S. government to confer citizenship on these veterans.

- But for the United States, 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 I and World War II.

Code talkers used their native languages to send messages that the enemy could not decipher.

- My name is Peter MacDonald and I'm from Teec Nos Pos, 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 they would 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.

(somber 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 they catch you talking Navajo, they punish you.

They grab you by your hair and they stick that soap down in your mouth and wash that dirty word you just said.

Spit it out or 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 the code word for hand grenade, for instance, was (speaking in foreign language).

(speaking in foreign language) In Navajo means potato.

Why?

Because hand grenade looks like a potato.

So if another Navajo outside this top-secret classroom hear us saying (speaking in foreign language) they think we're talking about French fries.

(somber music) 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.

(explosions booming) (engines whining) August 7, 1942, 1st Marine Division landed on the island of Guadalcanal with 13 of the Navajo code talkers to test the code that was just developed.

After Guadalcanal, Bougainville.

After Bougainville, Cape Gloucester, New Britain, Tarawa, Makin, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, 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 all other military codes that were in use at that time.

General Vandegrift sent work back to the 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 US 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 Menominee are a woodland tribe, didn't wear those kinds of Plains 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 an ear that was open to joining the military, because it fit so congruently with our warrior culture and that warrior spirit in action.

- [Dispatcher] Stand-in Three, this is Fox 23, can you see that contact to our front?

This is Rox 23, out.

- [Jamescita] The military spends millions of dollars on nice, glossy TV commercials,.

- [Announcer] There are those who choose a different path in life.

- Brochures, pamphlets to bring in recruits.

- [Patty] If you go into recruiting office in border towns near Indian reservations, you'll see those warrior images, Native warrior images in those materials.

The U.S. military understands that there's this warrior tradition in Indian country and it's not afraid to use it.

- [Announcer] They fight for country.

They fight for honor.

They fight to win.

(explosions booming) 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.

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."

And 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 in 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 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 start a new chapter.

For other Native Americans, it's often the same thing.

They want to start a new chapter in their life.

(upbeat music) They want to reclaim that identity as a Native warrior.

They want to reclaim their identity as Native Americans.

- A lot of my uncles, cousins, relatives joined the service not only in war time but in peace time because it was an economic pursuit.

It was a way to get away from the reservation and to make money and to be able to provide for your family.

And so, again, that's kind of the warrior tradition, to provide, provide, 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 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.

(somber 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 is 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.

(dramatic music) (crickets chirping) - When I was young, we lived out in the country, just my grandpa and my grandma and I. I was raised by my grandparents.

One day my grandfather came over and said (speaking in foreign language) which means "Grandson, sit down, I want to talk to you."

So I didn't want to because I wanted to go play.

But 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, (speaking in foreign language) "Grandson, we're done talking."

And he never once said one word.

And I was able to learn patience with 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 in 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 and your soul.

- I was always up front, 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.

(somber music) - I was 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 infantrymen 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 I shot during the battle in Samarra for Operation Baton Rouge.

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."

It got picked up by the "Washington Post" and other papers.

Right before the Battle of Fallujah, which was in November, 2004 in Iraq.

I remember, we were preparing for battle.

So, I joke, I called my Humvee my war pony, my iron war pony.

And so I started blessing it, started marking it and smudging it.

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.

(gentle music) - [Lanny] During all of my overseas deployment, my grandmother she would pray in the Kiowa language and she would place paint here, here, back of 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.

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 standing.

Is that luck?

Probably, but I think it was my grandmother's prayers.

- I had three feathers that I carried with me on my person the entire time.

(gentle music) 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 onto the end of my weapon.

I was in a lot of heavy firefights and that's, 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 of corn pollen.

Medicine 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 you get into a real tough situation, maybe bullets flying five to 10 inches over their heads, mortar shells exploding everywhere, looks like you're 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 the 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?"

(artillery booming) - 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 human psyche.

(somber music) (artillery booming) - I wasn't the same person I was before I went to Vietnam than I was when I came back.

I'll never forget the images of the 18 Vietcong that we killed.

I mean, body parts, arms, legs, half of their body, it etches 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 haven't in 50-something years, you know.

(artillery booming) - The guys stick, he's gun is sticking up there.

- Got it.

- 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 shot and seen fall, I see them all the time.

- Six, one.

(chattering) - [Michael] Even the toughest guy out there, the strongest dude out there, he tells you it doesn't bother him, he's full of it.

- I had PTSD.

There was times where I felt concerned about how I was dealing with it.

And it's really important to recognize and be that warrior, to reach out, to say you need help.

(singing in foreign language) And largely it was 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 into balance, back into harmony, back into connection with their home communities 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 Powwow, 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 Comanche Kiowa that I knew that served in Vietnam, their families did the same for them.

It was just the tradition that goes back to the Plains days.

You know, honor the warriors.

(singing in foreign language) - [Patty] 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.

(singing in foreign language) 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, and we talk to each other.

I've never told any of my fellow veterans what I just told you about the dead bodies.

And, but we know what we went through.

(artillery booming) - March 23, 2003, Lori Piestewa 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.

- [Announcer] 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.

(somber music) - It was really hard to lose a daughter.

You never expect your children are going to go before you.

Lori is the first Native American women to die in all the wars that the United States has been in, she's the first one to die on foreign soil.

- [Announcer] 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.

- [Priscilla] 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.

- [Announcer] Her home state of Arizona renamed Squaw 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 country.

- Forward, march.

- In our culture it is not common for women to be warriors, it is not common for women to go out and fight.

But Lori 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 Lori Piestewa was, for example, you are seeing very active combat and perhaps even paying the ultimate price as she did.

- If you look at every photograph I see of Lori, she's smiling.

She's always smiling.

Lori loved life.

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 kind of bravery and sacrifice that Native Americans have made and contributed to the U.S. military since there was a United States.

- Being a woman, not just a Native American woman but woman in the 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 accept 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.

They may offer them a separate group, but they won't allow them to stand side by side with the male, 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 the warrior way.

- There's more than one way to be a warrior.

You could be a diplomat warrior.

You can help people build infrastructure to bring roads and bridges into their communities.

I had built a rapport with the Afghan security forces.

And the commander for that unit wanted to ask some questions about me.

And so he said, "Ask her where's 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're hearing, "She's Redman, she's Redman, she's Redman."

And he says, "What tribe are you?"

And I said , "Well, I'm Comanche," and his response was "Comanche" and there was this reverence, this deep respect they had and then I said, "And then I'm also Apache," and no sooner than I said that I was Apache they yelled out, "Geronimo!"

(laughs) And it literally brought tears to my eyes and it still does because I said, "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."

(dramatic 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 of 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, "Do 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 their regalia and everything was made from things back home.

But things here in Iraq, (drums booming) the drum was made out of a 55-gallon oil drum cut in half.

Their stickballs that were using, they were old broom handles that were cut.

And we used parachute cords to make the netting.

- 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 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, blow darts or Indian marbles, Indian stickball.

- [Chuck] While we were 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 is a serious game.

You can't leave it.

- [Debra] I believe that having a powwow in a combat zone sends the message not only to Native Americans and non-Native Americans, but to 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, (bright drum music) - The combat cameraman in me wanted to document it, because I have 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 powwow in a combat zone.

- [Debra] We all can learn from each other regardless of what size, what shape, what idea, what thought, what tribe, Indian, non-Indian, what we are, that we can communicate, we can help each other, we can learn.

We want them to know us, we want to know them.

And having that powwow helped 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.

(gentle music) - I think the definition of warrior is changing in Indian country.

I think we appreciate the service 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 younger Native people asking, "Well, 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.

(singing in foreign language) - [Announcer] 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 you have that kind of contradiction in that Indians who have fought for the United States are now fighting against the United States government.

At the same time the 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 it's 10 to 12,000.

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.

And 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 think that's why we had so many veterans that were at Standing Rock.

- [Debra] 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 and face danger.

- [Donald] 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 Rock Sioux people, "and things need to be corrected."

- [Patty] 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.

(crickets chirping) (singing in foreign language) - At a 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.

And when he comes home on leave again, I'm going to pass these two feathers on to him so that he can carry the tradition on.

And then hopefully one day he'll 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.

(singing in foreign language) - [Rhonda] I'll never forget that feeling, the first time you hear the drum, because even though we had come home and gotten off the plane and had started to resettle with our families and 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.

(singing in foreign language) (dramatic music)