Photo of Piestewa Peak and monument identifying the peak

Dialogue

Rematriation in the Time of MMIWG2S Soldiers

The road leading to Piestewa Peak. Shutterstock

Spring/Summer 2023

By Delores (Lola) Mondragón

I write to you from a place of painful knowing, continuing to traverse the Coatlicue state as an Indigenous Chickasaw Chicana Two-Spirit grandmother, United States Navy veteran, scholar, and drum-keeper. I am also the great-granddaughter of Shimohoke, who was born around 1797 and died at the age of 103 in 1900, according to the Dawes Rolls of 1902. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced Shimohoke to leave our ancestral homelands and to witness so many of our relatives die as she walked the Trail of Tears toward Oklahoma.

I share the following words through the lens of Indigenous rhetoric, and I look to my Chickasaw grandmothers Parsekoyu, Shimohoke, Liza, Sallie, Jewell, Phyllis, and my mother Jennifer to harness the courage, clarity, and strength to testimoniar about my collective community—Two Spirit Native American and Indigenous veteran women, including missing and murdered Indigenous women and brother soldiers who never got out. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Girls and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S) peoples continue to be part of the legacy of colonization (conquering through genocide) that unfortunately is explicitly and implicitly sanctioned by governments unwilling to recognize their own continued complicity. Thankfully, activists and dutiful organizations are why we know about MMIWG2S peoples as they push for accountability, visibility, and justice.1

In looking through the lens of sacred ecologies—and, more specifically, rematriation—we are able to reveal and begin to understand the stories of many Indigenous peoples. Keeping in mind that rematriation is a new consideration for some, I would like to share Steven Newcomb’s definition as it best aligns with my work here. He writes:

By “rematriation” I mean “to restore a living culture to its rightful place on Mother Earth,” or “to restore a people to a spiritual way of life, in sacred relationship with their ancestral lands, without external interference.” As a concept, rematriation acknowledges that our ancestors lived in spiritual relationship with our lands for thousands of years, and that we have a sacred duty to maintain that relationship for the benefit of our future generations.2

I also share a testimonio, as a form of rematriation that can be shared with others and that can hopefully help us remember the names and remarkable contributions of so many MMIWG2S peoples who continue to take care of us as they continue to survive in our stories.

The compelling journeys of MMIWG2S soldiers have reshaped narratives, identities, legislation, and other knowledges. They have instigated further movement toward resurgence and liberation from hermeneutic injustice and erasure. They teach and remind us how militarization perpetuates genocide that is destroying all of us, one body at a time and one war at a time.

They teach and remind us how militarization perpetuates genocide that is destroying all of us, one body at a time and one war at a time.

If we look at these soldiers’ journeys as related to the destruction of the land and to our current ecological disasters, they also teach us how continuing to survive insidious genocidal practices over a prolonged period of time can potentially mitigate and reverse our extinction. A better future might be possible if we collectively acknowledge that egregious and passive neglect is destroying all of us, not only one body at a time or one war at a time, but one glacier at a time, one fire at a time, one dry river at a time, one pandemic at a time, one extinctic relative at a time—all of us at all times.

I am fortunate to have strong grandmothers and grandfathers, ever-present ancestors who walk beside me, next to me, and behind me to remind me that they survived for me. As a grandmother now, I can see my future generations standing in front of me, and I reflect on how I will stand next to them. How can we move in good ways on the land we are leaving behind for them to repair and care for? I write and reflect on how I must survive and how our stories must survive, too, because neither MMIWG2S peoples nor our stories were supposed to survive. It is up to some of us to tell our compelling stories and share the lessons they keep telling us in order to heal and return to the sacred. Here, I will share how some of our relatives are doing this in this world and from the Spirit world.

I begin with the land because, as simple as it is and as obvious as it is, we need to keep reminding ourselves that we are the land. Our ancestors are in the land—there is no difference for those of us who grew and grow with wisdom from Indigenous traditions. We don’t believe in having dominion over our relatives, over our grandmothers and grandfathers, our ancestors, just as we don’t believe in having dominion over the land.

Elaine Alec of the Okanagan and Shu-swap Nations and member of the Penticton Indian Band writes of this relationship and responsibility to the land:

As indigenous peoples, we have always been told that we are a part of the land. We are the land. We speak for the land and have a great responsibility to protect it. We have spent generations fighting for our land to make sure that we take care of it for our future generations.3

Robin Kimmerer from the Potawatomi Nation reiterates and broadens this understanding when she describes land, as understood by many Indigenous peoples, “as sustainer. Land as identity. Land as grocery store and pharmacy. Land as connection to our ancestors. Land as moral obligation. Land as sacred. Land as self.”4 Keith Basso adds further texture to the significance of land, of place:

For Indian men and women, the past lies embedded in features of the earth—in canyons and lakes, mountains and arroyos, rocks and vacant fields—which together endow their lands with multiple forms of significance that reach into their lives and shape the ways they think. Knowledge of places is therefore closely linked to knowledge of the self, to grasping one’s position in the larger scheme of things, including one’s own community, and to securing a confident sense of who one is as a person.5

Photos of young woman in army cammo and gear

Army Specialist Lori Piestewa, 2003. Wikimedia

One example of how land reshaped a community, which is also a journey of rematriation, is the story of Piestewa Peak. United States Army Specialist Lori Piestewa died from her wounds in 2003 while serving in the 507th Maintenance Company during the Iraq war. Lori Piestewa was Hopi and Mexican American, and the journey of her name onto a peak after she walked on to the Spirit world reclaims and redefines the identities of Native women and the land.

The fight to change Squaw Peak to Piestewa Peak began in Phoenix, Arizona. Many of us witnessed this important struggle, which Al Carroll has recorded for posterity in his book Medicine Bags and Dog Tags. As Carroll conveyed, racism and sexism were at the fore: “The spectacle of publicly disparaging and insulting a soldier killed in combat worsened at the start of the call for changing the name of Squaw Peak to Piestewa Peak.”6 (Squaw, for reference, is an ethnic and sexual slur used to refer to a Native American woman.) When many challenged the proposal to change the renaming of the peak, it was a glaring reminder to many of us of the continued practice of epistemic violence toward peoples who learn who they are from the land. Those who supported the renaming prevailed, and now when you visit Piestewa Peak things are different.

Renaming this sacred land after a 23-year-old mother of two, who was the first documented Native American woman to die in combat, was a meaningful act of rematriation for us all. I contend that though Lori lost her life, she brought healing and the sacred back to the land. Wayne Taylor writes that Lori “died without hurting anyone. She died following orders. She died in control, helping others. She died a warrior, in the Hopi Way.”7 And in having the peak renamed Piestewa, Lori redefined the land and therefore the people. Lori continues to provide healing and to help others, by standing in “the Hopi Way” and reminding us of the epistemic violence that haunted Indigenous people, especially women, for so long.

 

Lori’s name has also been added to a song that helps and heals in other ways. Cherokee Elder Barbara Warren understood that our communities needed a veteran women’s honor song, and she was looking to catch one. She watched a documentary on the lives of Jessica Lynch, Shoshana Johnson, and Lori Piestewa and decided to put their names into the honor song “Women Warriors of the 507th.” Barbara shared that this honor song was for all military women, veterans, and their families waiting at home to care for them when they returned.8

I have witnessed that, in leading this song around a spiritual healing drum with veteran women and their relatives, many have expressed a release of grief. Some have opened up enough to hint of the wounds of war that are particular to women who have served in the United States military. Because Barbara and Lori have demonstrated what rematriation, a return to the sacred, looks like, they are making space for a return to the self through these much-needed expressions of grief and pain.

Another demonstrated example of rematriation are the concerted efforts of Laguna Pueblo and US Secretary of the Interior Debra Haaland to help find and return Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit peoples (MMIWG2SP). Secretary Haaland helped establish the Missing and Murdered Unit (MMU) within the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Justice Services at the beginning of April 2021, and she began doing work that was sacred for those of us desperately asking for a reprieve from malicious institutional neglect.9 In creating MMU, with interagency cooperation and funding designated for the purpose of finding answers, we have a reprieve, and recognition is given of our collective responsibility in mitigating the insidious and violent erasure of ourselves. These efforts are providing an opportunity to heal from injustice, entrenched violence, and institutional neglect.

I save the heaviest part of this testimonio for last—the story of United States Army Private First Class Vanessa Guillén, a Mexican American daughter and sister who was killed with a hammer, dismembered, and burned. According to an NPR report, “Guillén’s family said she was sexually harassed before her death, but fear of retaliation kept her from reporting it.”10 Her death began the #metoo movement in veteran communities as the hashtag #iamvanessaguillen compelled “hundreds of survivors [to come] forward to share their stories of sexual trauma.”11 This movement allowed survivors to share their testimonios, discover or change the narratives, and, through their shared stories, helped them heal and “find community”—and in some cases helped others return to or find Indigenous ceremonies. And the testimonios, public witnessing of Vanessa’s funeral, and other critical rematriating ways, for their daughter and sister, demonstrated how, with perseverance and heart, Vanessa’s mother and sisters made sure her short life changed the lives of so many for the better.

Street mural of Guillen with candles and flowers

Mural with memorial offerings in memory of Vanessa Guillen. Terence Faircloth (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

 

There have been other violent events, including Tail Hook and Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and countless other “controversial” stories of sexual assault covered by the media and discussed in congressional hearings on sexual abuse at military academies, bases, ships, and combat zones. But decades of advocacy and investigations into these other cases didn’t accomplish the drastic changes that Vanessa’s journey was able to do. Her life and the way it ended has resulted in generational changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the National Defense Authorization Act, including several measures that reform how the military treats sexual harassment or assault. Most of those measures were drawn from or inspired by the I Am Vanessa Guillén Act.

The fear of reporting a sexual assault or harassment, or even witnessing it, has led to the unnecessary death of so many. Army veteran Sarah Blum, who served in Vietnam, highlighted the insidious way these unnecessary deaths occurred in Iraq:

In 2007 Colonel Janis Karpinski reported that in 2003, “Three female soldiers had died of dehydration in Iraq,” rather than risk rape by their brother soldiers near the latrines and generators. Colonel Karpinski was in the room when the doctor gave his briefing to the deputy commander saying, “These women died in their cots.” Worse yet, she heard the deputy commander, “Tell him [the doctor] not to say anything about it, because that would bring attention to the problem.” Perhaps more than attention to the problem, it would bring attention to the military corps’ failure to deal with a problem.12

Blum continues: “In addition to having a culture of abuse, the military is choosing to cover up what is happening to our women soldiers. When women are raped and come forward to report it they are punished, ostracized, treated as traitors, and often discharged without benefits, while rapists are free to do as they please and are often promoted.”13 I, and so many other veterans, know more than one woman that this has happened to. Vanessa Guillén died from this deep-seated fear of institutional betrayal. But her story has brought to light countless violations done to our brothers and sisters who had served or who continue to serve in the military. With the help of her sisters, Vanessa was able to better the conditions for those too scared, who might also have died, afraid, in their cots.

To conclude, I want to share how Winona LaDuke contextualizes the continued violation of the sacred that allows for there to be MMIWG2S soldiers. I hope that through her words we are reminded of how interconnected we truly are and how continued neglect of our relatives, including Mother Earth, needs a deeper, uncompartmentalized understanding:

I do not hate the military. I do despise militarization and its impacts on men, women, children, and the land. The chilling facts are that the United States is the largest purveyor of weapons in the world, and that millions of people have no land, food, homes, clean air, or water, and often, limbs, because of the military funded by my tax dollars. Countless thousands of square miles of Mother Earth are already contaminated, bombed, poisoned, scorched, gassed, bombarded, rocketed, strafed, torpedoed, defoliated, land-mined, strip-mined, made radioactive and uninhabitable.14

MMIWG2S soldiers, too, face the toxic results of militarization. The murder of Army Specialist Vanessa Guillén, the lynching of Army Sergeant Elders Fernandez, the beheading of Army Specialist Enrique Roman-Martinez (whose body was never recovered) are reminders for us to see how black and brown bodies are violated in the same ways that Mother Earth is violated—the burn pits poison the land, and us too. Understanding and knowing the benefits of sacred ecologies, including rematriation, when viewed through an Indigenous lens, can, I hope, bring forward a deeper need to re-remember our relatedness and help us move away from the destruction of our sacred peoples and sacred places.

 

Notes:

  1. The Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women (CSVANW), www.csvanw.org/mmiw/, and the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC), www.niwrc.org/policy-center/mmiw, have often been the only source of support for so many family members unable to find justice through their governments.
  2. Steven Newcomb, “Perspectives: Healing, Restoration, and Rematriation,” American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation News & Notes 2, no. 1 (spring/summer 1995).
  3. Elaine Alec, Calling My Spirit Back (Tellwell, 2020), 168.
  4. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed, 2013), 337.
  5. Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache (University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 34.
  6. Al Carroll, Medicine Bags and Dog Tags: American Indian Veterans from Colonial Times to the Second Iraq War (University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 217.
  7. Wayne Taylor, “Lori Died a True Hopi Warrior,” Indian Country Today, April 27, 2005; updated September 12, 2018, ictnews.org.
  8. Barbara Warren, “How I Caught ‘Women Warriors of the 507,’ ” personal email, September 5, 2022.
  9. “Secretary Haaland Creates New Missing & Murdered Unit to Pursue Justice for Missing or Murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives,” U.S. Department of the Interior, April 1, 2021.
  10. Bill Chappell, “Vanessa Guillén’s Murder Led the U.S. to Deem Military Sexual Harassment a Crime,” NPR.org, January 27, 2022.
  11. Sarah Sicard, “Hundreds Come Forward as #Iamvanessaguillen Movement Surges Online,” Military Times, September 1, 2022.
  12. Sarah L. Blum, Women under Fire: Abuse in the Military (Brown Sparrow Publishing, 2013), 27.
  13. Ibid.
  14. Winona LaDuke, preface to The Militarization of Indian Country, ed. Winona LaDuke with Sean Aaron Cruz (Makwa Enewed, 2012), xv.

Lola Mondragón is a Two-Spirit Chickasaw Chicana Iposi (grandmother), USN veteran, and Native drum keeper. She is also a doctoral student in the Department of Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara.

Please follow our Commentary Guidelines when engaging in discussion on this site.