(man) For those of you that have come today, we want to say welcome on behalf of [speaking Dakota] "Tínta Wíta Oyáte kin hená he Bdewákhathunwan Oyáte hená hechá wastédapi he."

Art is going to mark these young men.

[speaking Dakota] "Hóka, olówan aú po."

[ceremonial drum plays; men sing in Dakota] ♪ "Wanná hí yelo."

♪ ♪ "Wanná hí yelo."

♪ ♪ "Oyáte wichóni kta cha."

♪ ♪ "Thathánka wan hí yelo."

♪ ♪ "Thathánka wan hí yelo."

♪ ♪ "Thanthánka wan hí yelo."

♪ (man) if you look at a Buffalo herd, usually the Bulls are the [speaks Dakota] "Pté bloká."

They will go in a counterclockwise where everybody else would be going clockwise.

They was looking for the enemy to come in.

The bulls were always aware that this is the center, and they were now still the protector.

As young people we are raised to defend our people, so we are very dedicated, we are very well-taught to hunt and to provide.

[loud gunshot] They were raised to be what they call the warriors.

We had our leaders do the best they could to try to communicate with the government.

A lot of us were beaten down and practically destroyed by the government and the troops.

And how we were settled on our reservations geographically-- 550 more tribes across this, what we call Turtle Island.

Each tribe realized that there are no more warriors.

A lot of our people said, well, being a warrior no longer happens so maybe I'm going to help this country.

So one thing that they did was, they joined the military.

(Arthur Owen) We are native people-- we don't fit in to the Mexican; we don't fit in to the Puerto Rican; we don't fit into the blacks, we don't fit into the whites.

So we are a separate group.

That Indian has to walk in two worlds, you say, that Indian, he's having a hard time, huh?

He's already pressured in society, much less he had war and its aftermath to it.

He struggles; he really does struggle.

Going into Vietnam in 1969, one of the first things that struck me was the economics.

The economics were so low there.

Then came the smells.

The smells were all of Vietnamese culture.

(Vince Beyl) The intelligence said that there was a enemy buildup on a village about 3 clicks over to the next one there, so we had to go down to the village.

The VC, they don't run supplies down Ho Chi Minh's trails.

so they come in at night, and that's how their food supply was and there was some weapons, and we had to pack those people up and tell them they're going to live a better life above the DMZ.

And burned everything to the ground and shot every water buffalo, pig, chicken.

People were screaming and yelling and old people, they were looking at us with a lot of hate, and some guys are getting off on it, and I am not.

One woman actually looked like my grandmother, to be truthful.

That was the real introduction, the reality, I guess, was at that village right there.

They told us it was a necessary evil.

(Sandra White Hawk) I remember talking to veterans who were deeply conflicted Or they went in not being conflicted, and then when they got there, they realized what was going on.

(Valerie Barber) One of my older cousins came back, and he said, "A couple times I absolutely couldn't shoot at someone," he said, "because they looked too much like us."

And they were just skinny boys that were trying to be soldiers.

(Sandra White Hawk) In the late '60s and early '70s our people still didn't have a voice publicly.

Beyond that we have the grief and loss of intergenerational trauma.

(Valerie Barber) I attended one of the federal government boarding schools In Cheyenne Eagle Butte South Dakota.

We held each other up and we kind of modified ways of learning to fit ourselves, and I carried that with me into later life.

I moved to Hayward Wisconsin which is by the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation which is my home reservation.

It was a strange thing because in the boarding school we had been the majority, and then when I came and hit the public high school, we were the minority there, and we were an oppressed minority.

There were things that I now recognize as great inequities.

And so we were not really encouraged to go on to higher education.

The reservations were in-- struggling at that time-- economically; and our people were really struggling from having had the boarding school experience.

But because we didn't have a standard nuclear family, but that we lived in extended families, and we lived in poverty, it was, we were deemed as not fit to raise our children.

So I was adopted out from the Rosebud Reservation when I was 18 months old by a white missionary couple.

They had bought the narrative of the day that Indian children needed saving from the reservation.

There was a lot of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse.

So not only was I not safe at home I really didn't feel safe in the community that I was growing up in as well.

I was raised by many strong military men My uncle, Harvey Beaman Owen, he came from the Lakota Code Talkers.

My other uncle is Woodrow Keeble, he is the Medal of Honor winner up in Korea.

So in time, we come to seeing these men, some of them are dying off.

Their time had come, and they're moving on.

And they're telling you where you should go.

This is a [speaks Dakota] a "Zuyá," it's a soldier.

This is "Akíchita," he's a protector.

"Thokhána, Thokhána" is in the community.

He's around camp, he's a helper.

So you start to see the levels of what they are.

My father was in the Army, and most of my relatives, my older male relatives, and cousins were also in service.

And was just the thing that the boys did, and I was always curious about how they were changed when they came back-- they were just little bit different And at this time, most of them had gone to Vietnam.

I was always looking at the newspaper because they had a certain amount of numbers where we'd get drafted.

From my home reservation, we went to pre-induction, and we went through hearing tests.

I remember going into this big holding facility.

There had to be about 50 of us sitting there.

And in the next room there was some people that were now drafted in one of those numbers, a whole bunch of them, maybe 100 of them were there-- a lot of them.

They called names out, so we were listening to that, all these guys stood up, and they said to them, "Gentleman you are now Marines."

[whispers] What's a Marine?

I didn't know what a Marine was.

(Vince Beyl) I guess I kind of drafted myself.

We had a party after the high school graduation there, and we ran out of beer, so 3 of us pooled money, we tried to make last call at a bar in town.

We didn't make it, and there was a beer distributing warehouse there, there was a beer truck.

So we helped ourselves to some beer, made it back to the party.

And about 2 hours later the cops come and took myself in, and 3 other guys.

And I had never been arrested in my life.

A public defender just said okay, we'll talk to the judge, and if you enter the armed services, and you pay the restitution for your portion of what was stolen, and you enter the service, your record would be like it never happened.

So I chose the Marine Corps, so they sent over a Marine Corps recruiter to the jail.

I wasn't scared, but I just figured well, I guess I'll go.

I didn't think about Vietnam, to be truthful, at that time.

I just thought okay, I'll do the Marine Corps because I was a pretty athletic person.

If I am going to do a service, I would do that.

That's exactly how I entered the Marine Corps is because of one incident on a Friday night a long time ago.

[psychedelic hard rock music plays] ♪ (Sandra White Hawk) The counterculture was peace, love, barefoot in the park, sex, drugs, rock 'n roll-- all was good timing for me to have an outlet, to feel like I was normalizing my life, or feeling like I had a place to fit in 'cause I never felt like I fit in.

(Valerie Barber) I tried college a couple of times, and I was not academically or mentally prepared for it.

So I kept quitting, and I had various jobs.

And I remembered that steadiness that some of the people who had been in the service, that discipline they had.

I remembered that, so I thought, why don't I do this?

Because then I'll have to do it!

[laughs] So I went down to the recruitment office and took a test, and through talking to the recruitment officers that were there, decided to go into the Navy.

I wanted to go into the Navy because several of my relatives were corpsman in the Navy.

Well, the Navy recruiter went out to lunch, and the Marine Corps recruiter stayed in and ate at his desk, and promised me the world, and I believed him!

[laughs] And some of the guys that I went in there for preinduction, I heard that 16 of them were going to take off And I never got called, I never got drafted, but I went through preinduction-- I was ready.

So next thing you know, might have been that year, that summer.

16 bodies came back in 16 caskets.

Those are the 16 that were taken.

Geez, I think I went to 10 funerals; they were all my friends.

My cousin had just turned 17.

School wasn't in his plan.

So he went to his mother and father and asked to join the Army.

They thought it through, and they okayed it.

So they shipped him to Fort Campbell Kentucky, 101st Airborne School.

My other cousin, the same way.

And so they told me, they said, are you coming in?

I said well, I have a couple scholarships for running track, of 5 schools of the Big Ten.

And I thought about that.

(Valerie Barber) I think it was different in most tribal environments or circles, because going into the service was an honorable thing.

We were not swayed by the political side as much.

I got up one morning and had a cup of coffee with my dad.

It was like 5:00 in the morning.

He was sitting there, he knew.

I said dad, I've got to get in there.

I can't leave them like that, I just can't do that, and I don't think I could live with myself really.

"Well son," he said, "I'm going to tell you, don't be no hero, and follow orders-- that's all I'm going to say."

They put you on the plane, and you get to San Diego, then all of a sudden a bus picks you up, and they tell you how to sit, stand.

I'm thinking, oh man, really, what have I got myself into?

All the drill instructors we had, these were guys that had done 2 or 3 tours in Vietnam.

So as you're going through your training telling certain individuals you're going to kill everybody, you're going to get the whole squad killed-- some can cut it and some didn't.

So there were some second thoughts there at the front end.

(Sandra White Hawk) I grew up being screamed at, yelled at.

I grew up being physically assaulted all the time-- being hit and slapped and clocked from behind and so the fact that they weren't hitting me-- I remember thinking well, bring it then, say whatever you've got to say-- 'cause I've heard it all already.

(Valerie Barber) In the morning we would start vehicles up, things like that, get everything ready for the day, get the dispatcher started.

And so these white boys that I worked with, they'd go, "Gentlemen start your Injuns."

And they would go "Oo-oo-oo," like give that war cry, or what they thought.

I got so tired of people asking me if I lived in a tipi.

So I harassed them back and said I lived in a 2-story tipi, and that would usually make them go away.

There were some weak individuals in our company, and I stepped aside and talked to them-- what is it that you can do?

Well, I can't do push-ups like you guys can, and I can't do overhead rungs like you guys can, I can't do the low crawl like you guys can, and so there were some soldiers that wouldn't give them the time of day.

There were a few of us that took them under our wing.

(all sing) ♪ Here comes the Navy ♪ ♪ Fighting and sea going through ♪ ♪ Ba-ba ba-ba-ba-ba ♪ ♪ Make way for Navy ♪ We had women in the barracks that had never ironed anything.

They had never done any work whatsoever.

And everything that you had to do to complete to get ready for inspection, you had this very small window to get it done, and it had to be done perfectly.

You'd get women that would-- [cries] trying to iron.

I was sometimes one of those people who'd say give me that damn thing, and I'd iron and get it done just 'cause I didn't want to deal with that.

[heavy rock music plays] (Arthur Owen) I was deployed in Vietnam for a little over a year.

I served with the 11th Armored Cavalry, Black Horse, Second Squadron, Eagle Horse, H Company, up in Cambodia United States Army, 1969, 1970, acting Sergeant (Vince Beyl) I'm a United States Marine, Vietnam veteran, served in Vietnam from 1970 to '71.

I served with the Second Battalion, First Marines Ran with a 12 man squad and carried the 60, which is, anybody that's in a squad knows it's the lifeblood of the unit.

(Sandra White Hawk) I was a radioman, I was trained on teletype.

I served in the United States Navy from 1974 to 1976.

(Valerie Barber) I served in the United States Marine Corps from 1974 until 1980, which was the last part of the Vietnam war.

Just for me, right from day one, I just didn't ask, didn't say a lot.

There was nobody else that I went through the training with from boot camp or anybody I knew once we got in the plane-- it was all new people I met, as far as where I was assigned with that division, that company, and so forth.

(Arthur Owen) They have choppers going all over the place.

You realize this is totally different.

And it's just like being bombarded by things that you've never seen before.

I hadn't gone to Vietnam.

We had been through the mechanics school and advanced automotive and things like that.

People still didn't believe we could do it.

So we were put to doing things like sanding brake shoes, which exposed us to asbestos fibers.

They never provided us with ear protection, and some of us lost part of our hearing.

(Sandra White Hawk) The war room was right on site where we were; they called it the war room where confidential messages went.

So there was this huge wall of the world map.

And the long sticks where they could move ships and submarines around, because the messages were telling you where everybody was.

I took this one confidential message over and handed it to the officer of the day and kind of looked at that wall and went, oh, now I get it.

We get up into Cambodia, and that's where we start to get clearances that we needed to go in there.

What I was doing, we had to have coordinates controlled areas.

They call in some of the Air Force bombs to clear that area out, which is Agent Orange-- take some of that canopy down to cut the supply routes off, etc.

And it's real difficult because there's only a few of you-- maybe 5 to 8 of you, and here's battalions and battalions of NVA right in front of you from here maybe 40 feet away, and you have to learn to be quiet.

You have to learn to be stealth, they call it.

We were hit that night, about 7:00 at night, and we didn't finish until about 7:00 in the morning.

At the time we had about 447 body count.

But being overrun like that, they came right through us.

They came at the concertina wire with homemade ladders.

They threw them down on the concertina wire so they wouldn't get cut up, and they just come running in.

And I can just see their faces; I see them all the time.

One got off a, he threw a charge in there.

It killed 2 of our men right there.

If I didn't take the other one out, it would have been worse.

You see illumination that's out there-- that's all you can see is a silhouette-- that's all you see is a silhouette until they get up right on you.

You are constantly asking for illumination.

We had fougasse set up, 55 gallon fougasse, we had to blow them.

Being a PFC at the time, I had to pick up all the dead bodies-- just like Wounded Knee.

Make a big pile until the Rome plows came, and dug a big, deep hole-- we threw them all in there.

(Vince Beyl) We set up a perimeter on a hill, and I was in the foxhole with a guy from Chicago, and he was on a hit of acid, LSD.

I kept my mouth shut, I just did what I did, I didn't freak out or whatever.

About 3:00 that morning they come up the hill, the flare goes up, and you can see the little bitty pith helmets and khakis.

The gun jammed on us, we got about 3 belts through it, and this guy was pretty high, cleared the weapon, and fired it down the line.

Then he come along the perimeter there, the squad leader, and asked if we were okay, and I didn't say anything about the guy or whatever there.

The sun started coming up in the morning, you see bodies and stuff laying there, go down and get their knapsacks off of them, get what intelligence there, and then they come in and packed the bodies up and took them away, and we moved on to another hill.

The guy I was with, they medevaced him back to, they call it the main, it was a hospital in Danang; never seen him again.

And then you start to see the economics of the war.

I say that because we go into the Michelin rubber plantation.

It's called a free fire zone; they can't fire in there.

So we went in there and were getting hit from the back side, the right flank, they're coming in.

So I get on the radio, and I hit it, I said, "Battle 6, battle 6, this is Battle 1, Zero, Oscar, over."

He come back up, I said, "We are taking fire on the right flank.

I'm requesting return fire."

He said, "Is it direct?

And I said, "It's direct."

He said, "Well, go ahead then."

So we turned the turret back around, we started firing HE rounds in there.

We started to realize the damages that were done to the rubber trees-- some of those we had to pay for out of our own pocket.

They were taken out of your paychecks.

The blacks would say, chief, we're going to this back home, when we get home, it's going to be the same thing.

It doesn't change anything.

Looking back and seeing my uncles and what they went through and what I could do to be a better person-- now it's my turn.

Yet you have some groups that are saying it's not our war.

This is all fought out of Washington DC-- this has nothing to do with us.

And then as you start to see in the field-- maybe they're right.

They didn't want nothin' to do with the North or us, in fact, even certain South Vietnamese joined the North-- that's how much they hated us coming in there.

Those are the things that some can, they reflect back on that whole thing is that, I shouldn't say I believed everything that was told to me, okay, I don't know if it's propaganda or whatever you want to call it to keep that war goin'.

Now you're actually there and you know it was the furthest thing from the truth-- that's for me personally.

I had one grandfather, papasan they called him, he came up to me and he grabbed me from the side like this, and he grabbed me like this, and he said, "Same same."

And it dawned on me what he was talking about.

You know, they're just farmers, agricultural people, that's all they are.

Now they put a label on them and call them Viet Cong, not all of them were, but they were agricultural, just trying to make a living.

You look back in your own mind, well hey, the 4th Cavalry was here-- they took all my buffalo.

They're doing the same thing; the good old boys are doing the same thing.

(Vince Beyl) I came back and got discharged.

I flew back to Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, then to Travis, and then I got discharged at Treasure Island.

We come off, at Treasure Island you've got to come under the Oakland Bay Bridge, and there was 6 or 8 protesters with the signs there.

They hit the van, there's 2 MPs up front, there's a driver, and there was about 8 of us in the van taking us to San Francisco airport, So that was my first encounter.

Then we got to San Francisco, there was nothin'.

A lot of veterans especially postwar, you just came home by yourself, I mean, you didn't come home in your uniform, in a platoon or anything.

That's a very different, I just came home as a civilian.

Here you are, coming back, you know, finished my tour.

Do you get the same recognition that the men gave you for bravery and courageous-- it wasn't there; it wasn't there.

My great-grandmother passed, 3 months when I was in country, and I didn't get to come back because it wasn't considered immediate family, but for Indian people that know what I'm talking about-- an extended family-- that grandmother with the maternal grandmother And I never got to attend the funeral.

And I thought about her the whole time, and I think that she was with me the whole time.

She was a full-blooded Ojibwe woman, she was a fluent speaker that spoke limited English And I remember how she would greet me when I would come into the home and so forth.

The first thing I did was go to that gravesite.

When I came home, I was going to take my aunt out to eat.

I dressed up, I was just sharp in my dress blues and went to her house, and she ran in the back room and hid [laughs] because she said, "The police are here!"

[ceremonial drum plays; man sings] (Arthur Owen) "Waktéhde" is a welcoming home.

By that the grandmothers will come up, and they will hug you, they will welcome you back.

[women trilling] Some "walelie" as you come back into the community.

(man) All right, thank you very much.

Some will give you the blanket, some will wipe you down, some will wipe your hands, they'll have a whole ceremony for you.

It may take 4 or 5 days, but you're welcomed into the community back.

Some of the songs that they have made, for example, they made this "Thehiya kupe."

♪ Thehiya kupe lo yo hey ♪ ♪ Thehiya kupe lo yo hey ♪ Those songs are Red Feather Society songs.

As you are brought back, the song states that you are not returning the same.

You are not coming back the same.

[man sings in Dakota] ♪ ♪ (Sandra White Hawk) The more I started learning about what has happened to our people, I understood that our men had been stripped away of everything.

Really emasculated through economic oppression the boarding school era, just not having opportunities.

And all these gifted, intelligent men, who many found a place of pride in the service and came back, and that's what they had.

I saw that, and they deserve that, they earned that.

A lot of them come back, they come back out and they become users a lot.

Alcoholism and drug addiction seems to be prevalent there.

They have to have some kind of a let go of some sort.

There's programs out there, but people do not have the patience for that.

They want to get back into the world of the living-- what did I miss type of thing.

The trauma started to affect us.

We started to see how Vietnam was in our everyday life.

(Vince Beyl) I think it was about the 3rd week, other than when I got back home, ended up down in Minneapolis there at the Indian center.

And we were going to go down to a bar called the Corral Bar on Franklin Avenue, which is about 3 blocks.

And I was walking with 3 guys I was with.

Right as we came in the front of the Corral Bar, Franklin Avenue is in front.

We were just about ready to get in the door, and a car that come by backfired.

I hit the pavement, I hit the street, and those 3 guys laughing at me, saying look at this guy, hasn't even had a beer, and he is already messed up.

So I laughed with them-- what are you going to do, you know?

(Arthur Owen) Alcohol was the only way to cure it, and drugs, smokin' weed calmed me down.

(Vince Beyl) I got into drugs pretty heavy at that time, I'm not sure how much it was about posttraumatic stress or not, but I mean, hell, it was available.

I happened to be into that lifestyle at that time for 2 to 3 years.

(Valerie Barber) In boot camp, Camp Lejeune, I didn't know it, but we were exposed to volatile organic compounds that were contaminating the water there.

Some of us developed different types of cancers after that.

And so I have difficulty walking.

And it was just horrendous to be declared totally disabled by the doctors.

It's very hard to take.

[a bird chirping] (Arthur Owen) I remember one morning I woke up next to a tree by Minnehaha Park.

And I had realized that I had ran for 7-1/2 hours.

I ran it because I didn't want to hurt anybody.

That's all I needed was somebody to say something stupid-- that's all he had to do.

The only way that I could feel, I felt that it would protect them was to exhaust myself, and I did.

So I woke up, and I said a quick prayer that my dad talked to me about.

It helped me a lot.

It helped me to stabilize that thought of abandonment, yeah.

And nobody's on the same page with me.

Where's all these guys on the same page, where are they?

There was a great deal of prejudice against Natives at that time because they were starting to assert their rights to-- their treaty rights and things like that.

And this was also the era when they were rediscovering our language and culture to a great extent.

In 1968, my father made me a channunpa.

As you know, spiritually you can't touch it.

If you have blood on your hands you can't touch that channunpa.

As much as you'd like to, you can't.

I thought to myself, when is that going to happen?

I wasn't allowing it to happen-- to move in that direction.

There was a lot going on in the '70s when you came back, I mean, in the American Indian Movement, lived down in south Minneapolis there was things that took place that I would get involved with or support the cause.

The traffic light which is over on 24th and Cedar now in the Little Earth housing area where the child got hit and killed-- we stopped the traffic in protest, got arrested, went to Hennepin County and plus other movements that took place, or other issues that took place within Minneapolis at that time.

Started school at the U for a little bit, and then moved back to the White Earth Reservation for little bit, then back to Bemidji, worked in a residential treatment center for about 8 or 10 years, and I got a position in the school district.

I remember the first powwow I went to in 1988 on my reservation.

I was just first seeing that there were lots of Lakotas, not to mention 500 and some tribes, but just is to see the numbers of my own people.

People who knew I was a veteran-- I told one person I'd been in the service and, of course, they have to tell everybody!

And I remember being, why did I even say anything, 'cause whenever that victory song would come on, they'd go you go out there, and I'd say no I'm not going to go out there.

I would always have this push me, you know.

I think I didn't even count myself as a veteran 'cause-- the part that I couldn't understand was why as a Native veteran anybody would be interested in having me be part of anything.

I didn't really talk about my service because I hadn't gone to Vietnam.

I didn't really think my service equated.

Anyway I would just kind of put it down as...

I'm so glad they'll help me pay for my school and become a teacher.

I didn't go to veterans powwow's, I didn't go to any recognition.

And I think one of the factors in this was that I had seen so many service people humiliated and denigrated including native people for having gone to Vietnam, because this was a little after the protests, but that feeling was still lingering-- that the war was a bad thing, and they were contemptuous of our warriors.

And it was a hard thing to see.

At that time, the Veteran Affairs put me in the St.

Cloud VA for alcoholism.

And I looked at the time that there's nothing wrong with me.

But you have to make that choice yourself.

If you're not ready for a change, you're not ready for it.

And I started to work on myself.

When I had my hands wiped, that was the beginning of Art Owen, all brand-new.

The way that they explained it in the ceremonies for me, when they wiped my hands, he told me, when you go through life, the people that you knew, they won't be around you no more.

You're going to find a different set of people, and your social life is going to change as well.

And it's going to be directed to all the good that you can do in life, what's left of your life.

It's going to be about good, nothing but good And it has been.

I'll go through life with the thoughts and things, no doubt, but I know how to handle that now that the tools were given to me.

[jingles jingle] Art Owen is going to do some feathering here with a couple vets.

We would like to welcome the gentleman you see at this time carrying our sacred eagle staff, the first flags of indigenous nations.

These eagle staffs carried by the great chiefs, the warriors of the days of old.

Today we are honored to call upon veterans you see at this time.

We have combat veterans, as you can see-- servicemen, women...

I guess I just consider myself a normal citizen, during retirement, get an opportunity from time to time to announce powwows on the microphone and travel to many powwow celebrations throughout Indian country The first time being honored as a veteran, this is before I was even doing the announcing that I do now on the microphone, they asked for the veterans to come out, and I did during that veteran's song.

In the ceremony that followed, a healing ceremony that I chose to participate in, and if anything that I had still left in me that was those guilts and those shames-- that was the purpose of that ceremony and so forth.

(Valerie Barber) It wasn't until later in my life when my uncles and my relatives said you should go to the veterans honoring, they said, because it is not about wanting to go to war.

It's ultimately about deciding that you would give yourself for your country, making that ultimate sacrifice.

(Sandra White Hawk) Somehow the Oneida Nation Color Guard was really wanting to encourage women to participate in the Color Guard.

And they started coming over inviting me to be part of it.

I'd always find an excuse not to.

I just remember saying I don't think-- it's not right for me.

I didn't go to Vietnam, and I'd find all these reasons.

Finally, I think literally after 3 years of them continually encouraging me, I finally joined.

(Jerry M. Dearly) Back in those days, I'm sure you came back, and you went to certain areas where a woman would carry a flag-- they would frown on you because of that generation, that era, that time of nonaccepting.

That they were more like sitting at a typewriter or taking care of people who were, like nursing area.

So I think it kind of got stuck there.

(Sandra White Hawk) When I finally made my way out there, the men wouldn't shake ah, women's hands initially.

Not all of them, but quite a few.

I remember thinking, okay, well that's all right.

That divide that we feel as men and women-- that energy might come from the men, but if we think about it that energy doesn't come from them, it comes from generations of them being colonized into their thinking and not understanding.

[male announcer honoring] (Sandra White Hawk) So that's been there for a long time, that tension, and it's being less and less now, which is really awesome to see.

(Valerie Barber) It goes back to my hearing stories about women who could be heroes too.

In the child's mind, you develop an idea of what to admire and want to emulate and what to wish to become.

For me as a child it was amazing and wonderful to hear that women could do this too, and we are admired for it.

(Sandra White Hawk) There was this yearly powwow at the time, it was called the Highground Powwow in Pittsville Wisconsin.

Veterans came from all over the country to experience healing, sweats, and being able to talk with other Vietnam veterans That year the Wisconsin Indian Veteran's Association, they decided to pass that staff to me to take care of for a year.

Carrying an eagle staff, not having been a combat veteran, I just didn't feel worthy, I guess.

But when I was presented with that staff, they wanted me to say a few words, and I said to the men that were here I said I don't want you to think that we as women see ourselves as competing with you for a place.

We see ourself standing next to you, knowing we can do the job that you're doing, and we in no way want to take anything away from you.

But we are here.

(Art Owen) My elders at Prairie Island and others, they have gifted me with a bonnet.

And that's your responsibility as a headsman to the veterans-- regardless.

That's what you do.

The staff that is here, out here, the red feather you see out there, in Dakota Societies that is the Congressional Medal of Honor.

However, that may be sometimes just coffee and sitting down and listening, sometimes if they're going through a hard time with alcohol.

So we counseled many, many, many Vietnam veterans at the time.

Today we see many of the "Akíchita," the veterans that have been through Vietnam, And they help their people out considerably.

By that, they are involved with naming ceremonies, they are involved with sweat ceremonies, they are involved with "Hunka," adoption ceremonies, and they are involved with eagle feather ceremonies.

Today they have these units like the Sisseton Wahpeton Vietnam Veterans Association.

or [speaks Dakota] "Thokhála Okhólakichiye"-- or the Kit Fox Society of the the Sisseton people have given me a feather.

It's got Vietnam colors on there.

They have asked me to be a part of their unit because I'm doing what, as a "Eyapaha," or an announcer does.

(Sandra White Hawk) There are veterans who say Jerry is the only person that I would let speak for me, which is a huge honor.

Not being a veteran, he's listened and taught, and conveys to the people in a way that many can't the importance and the place that they hold.

So I know something happens, and veterans come in, they're honored, I will take my hat off, and I will stand like that; I will stand up.

If I have a bad day or things go down, I jump in the shower, or go take a swim in the lake, and a jump on that bike, put 100 miles in, and I'm good to go.

[engine rumbles] [engine accelerates] Well, I'm a member, an active member of the American Legion, Marine Corps detachment, we have one in Bemidji, and one in Park Rapids.

In Bemidji there we have what we call Ride for the Troops.

It's in its 15th year, it's a bike ride.

The ride is about 146 miles total.

We start out in Bemidji at noon, we have an honor guard there along with veterans, teachers from the high school.

The tribes are there with there staffs, we have our flags, and then the bikes take off.

They go through a portion of the White Earth Reservation where I'm from, and then we have the tribal escort by the law enforcement, we have the White Earth Honor Guard that's right there.

That's something for these bikes to come by and see about 4 or 5 eagle staffs along with all the flags and so forth.

The funds we make from the participants-- we have over 500-some bikes-- all of it is documented about the monies in the funds which started out 14 years ago goes to Gold Star Mothers and anything that's associated with veterans.

We do it for these younger veterans, whether they're from Afghanistan, Iraq, because we know what it's about, we know what it was like when there was no support.

[engine purrs then accelerates] I was very surprised when we got a letter that invited us to the president's inauguration, and how wonderful it was that we finally had a brown president.

I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

(Chief Justice Roberts) So help you God?

So help me God.

Congratulations Mr. President.

It never occurred to me that I would get to go.

Because I was the first Native American woman to finish mechanics school in the Marine Corps.

And I thought oh, I can't be the first one!

[laughs] I thought there must've been someone else before me-- some other Indian lady did this before me.

I never thought I'd go down in history for this sort of thing.

(Sandra White Hawk) Aside from the work that I do with adoptees, creating community forums, places for them to come together and share their experiences and help facilitate some healing from that grief and loss.

And so today I get asked to open events and emcee and do all the stuff that I would've never done had I not been with my veteran friends who I guess saw that in me and encouraged me.

Let's just own that-- that we are beautiful in the way that we are made and the way we are here today.

They are the ones that really encouraged me to get out and speak in front of people.

Now I know why when Jerry and Vince announce, and they've got this energy, and it's incredible to be able to lift our people up.

I'm really honored, really really honored to be able to participate in a small way to show our non-Native relatives who our protectors are, the role that we have, because we are still seen as second-class citizens-- we are still seen as drunken Indians, as unemployed Indians, not getting over what happened in the past.

And if they only knew the strength and the beauty that our people have.

And so you get this one moment to say this, and it's amazing.

My uncle, he told me, he said that, um... we need to take your era, which is Vietnam, and we need to sit down and talk about it.

And it's difficult though-- keep that dialogue going-- that "Atéyapi" is important to the next generation.

The next generation is Iraq.

The next generation is Afghanistan.

The next generation is Kuwait and all these other wars, conflicts that are happening.

And how do you build what's called this "Atéyapi"-- the making of a man-- how do you make him responsible?

How do you make him into man that has unconditional love?

How do you do that?

(Sandra White Hawk) As Lakota people, we're Buffalo Nation.

We've modeled our communities, our families after them by watching them and the way they move about, and the way they carry themselves is, female buffaloes along with the calves are always surrounded by the males of the herd.

There is a buffalo dance where we explain that in length, and that's how we teach our young people and remind us how we're to be with each other in our communities.

And many have picked up that responsibility, and that was its intent in the very beginning was to bring that back to each, and family in the area, to bring it back-- "Atéyapi" ceremonies, the cleansing ceremonies, the wiping of hands ceremonies-- so it relieves your mind from PTSD, it relieves your mind from those types of situations that you are in, and it takes that, and it heals that, not immediately, but it's time-consuming to do that.

Sometimes it's half your life.

It's taken me 32 years to get here, to talk like this openly.

And eventually, you know, you get past that.

How can we help?

Is there anything we can do?

Don't be afraid to ask.

Or maybe we might have to ask for you!

[laughs] Sometimes that's what you have to do.

Every combat veteran, whether Vietnam or all the wars have their own ways and means of dealing with that stuff.

Some never get to another level, some will always be the way it is, it's very unfortunate.

And then some need the services that are available-- if they're fortunate to have family, community Native traditions, ceremonies, culture, the resources available.

In fact, I would imagine today there's more resources available through the VA that were ever there available to Vietnam veterans-- and qualified people.

(Jerry M. Dearly) We had the sweat lodge.

Those grandfather, the stones came in, you know, that's our time to pray, in a dark place.

We're going to wipe you down, we're going to take care of you with the steam of these grandfathers that have been waiting thousands of years to help us.

They're going to help you; they're going to help us.

You're going to walk out of here, you're going to take care of them.

But now we're all okay, that part-- let those grandfathers take care of it.

But you also know that you learned something from that.

Use that to help other veterans if you can, and use that for your life.

You are all okay.

You are through fighting-- you can't fight with yourself anymore.

You let it go.

So when it comes to being a protector, all the men in our communities are that.

You could even see someone who has not been in the service, but they are always at every feast or at every gathering.

They're kind of watching, they're looking around, and if something needs to be lifted and moved, they are right there without being asked.

They are looking after people-- that's a protector.

And then we have those who know that it's, they are the ones that go out into the battle.

So today, it's going into the service, becoming that kind of protector.

And I started thinking about all the things I've been told about how we are to be good relatives and how we are to treat each other, and that's how our veterans are, that when, you've heard that phrase-- "Leave no one behind," and they go back, when one goes down they go back and get them.

They are truly, have learned, and that's being a protector of the people-- it's everything about who we are, it's in our DNA.

It's been in our DNA from time immemorial.

This is who we are-- the people's protectors.

[strings & flute play softly] The People's Protectors is available on DVD.

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