Members of the Native American Women Warriors, the nation’s first all-women Native American color guard, stand in a row wearing jingle dresses, each holding a flag. The first woman carries an eagle staff, bearing feathers of the creature sacred to Native women and stars from decommissioned American flags. Others have flags honoring all people in U.S. service, including those missing in action or taken prisoner of war, and one honoring their group of Native women.

Their silver tops sparkle in the heavy sunlight, illuminating the emblem above their hearts that honors their fallen sister, Specialist Lori Piestewa, the first Native American woman to die while serving in the U.S. military. Their skirts are strung with dog tags, and when they begin to move, their bell-like jingles promote healing for the veterans represented on each. The five women wear elements of traditional regalia representing their respective homelands.

Across the bushes, a man’s deep voice accompanies the powerful strikes of a drum. As he sings, the women march in single file towards the National Native American Veterans Memorial.

Warriors, but also Patriots

For many, this coexistence of American patriotism and Indigenous pride may seem contradictory.

“We get a lot of questions of how it is that we would carry an American flag when our lands were taken from us,” says Natalie Holt Breen (Abenaki), board member of the Native American Women Warriors (NAWW) and participant in the Folklife Festival. “It represents the people. We proudly serve to support the strength of our people. And that goes beyond just the people in our own tribes.”

Holt Breen stresses that the highest honor in Native American culture is to be a warrior. United by a tradition of service, the nonprofit NAWW serves as a global community of support for Native American women veterans. This reflects the ethos of service that Native Americans have upheld generationally. 

Among all ethnic groups, Native Americans have the highest rate of military service per capita. Twenty percent of Native Americans serving are women.

At one point, a “warrior” may have been a Native person who fought for their tribe. Today it might be a person who serves in the U.S. military. But according to Holt Breen, a warrior is generally “a person who protects our culture, our traditions, who helps with our youth, helps with our families, and helps with the community.”

“It’s not just one thing you’re protecting,” NAWW secretary Inez Sanchezolmos (Northern Arapaho) explains. “It may be an idea. It may be people. It may be the future.” She attributes this growing mentality to younger generations.

When Sanchezolmos enlisted in 2002, she remembers her Arapaho family discouraging it. “They still had that belief that everything the government did wasn’t trustworthy.” She was motivated to enlist after the September 11 attacks. “It was because of patriotism. It was much bigger than the idea of us versus them. It became all of us, Americans, versus them.”

Connecting Culture and Honoring History

NAWW fights Native American erasure by connecting younger generations to evidence of the Native culture of service. Holt Breen, through family history books and extensive genealogical research, can trace her family’s military service back to the year 1250.

Her bloodline is diverse, including English, German, Finnish, Abenaki, and Penobscot heritage, and warriors can be found among them all. On the Native side of her family, her great-grandfather served in the French and Indian War (1754–1763). In a conflict over North American territory between the colonial powers of Great Britain and France, the countries’ armies went to battle over large swaths of land inhabited by Indigenous tribes. Native warriors took to both sides of the battlefield, aiding whichever colonial power offered them the most security.

Native people have served the United States in many wars, though their stories and service have often been downplayed or hidden. According to personal records Haudenosaunee women fought bravely in combat on both sides of the War of 1812, though their pension records indicate no service beyond cooking for the troops. The Navajo Code Talkers deceived German and Japanese officials by using their Native language as a form of “code” that could not be deciphered once intercepted. Iroquois nurses volunteered their services during World War I; they left the troops with their care and left the world with written accounts of their wartime perspectives.

With a mission to “honor Native women who have served from the beginning,” as Holt Breen puts it, NAWW strengthens the visibility of Native warriors within American military history. It also reconnects individuals to their personal culture and history by uniting a nationwide, intertribal society of Native warriors. Holt Breen, as a child of military parents, says that in moving around, “you do lose a bit of who your people are and what your traditions are.”

Selisha Lossing (Paiute), NAWW color guard member, felt disconnected from her heritage while growing up in foster care.

“My culture was suppressed because of alcoholic parents, due to trauma that we were all trying to heal from,” she says. “I know NAWW is important, because it brought my military career and identity together as one.”

Lossing wishes she could have served in the army longer, but due to sexual trauma she experienced during her military service, she received an early medical discharge. Through NAWW, she shares her experience, heals from it, and helps other women share their experiences as well.

“Every time I tell my story, I heal a little bit more,” she says.

A Sisterhood that Serves

“It’s one thing when you have women come together and it fills your soul,” Holt Breen says. “But to have Native women together, it is powerful, and it fills your spirit tank.”

The women of NAWW lovingly refer to their organization as a sisterhood. Nieva Maria Santana Brock (Taíno), a retired Navy JAG officer, found peace at NAWW: “I finally found somebody I can call a sister and honor our ancestors with.”

NAWW offers resources to support veterans in their transition into retirement, healing from PTSD, and general emergency circumstances. “We do that for any of our veterans, not necessarily women, and they don’t have to be Native,” Holt Breen said. While their support knows no boundaries, it remains important that NAWW was made by and for Native women.

During military service, one can expect to be surrounded by a diverse workforce, “but it is unique when you find other Native Americans, especially Native American women, that you kind of just link to,” Sanchezolmos says. “It’s just magnetic.”

She recounts meeting her closest friend in the Navy: “She was Navajo in San Diego. We saw each other’s beaded keychains, and we got to talking. After that it was like that magnetic link.” They remain close friends today, bonded by their shared cultural experiences both in and out of the military.

NAWW similarly helps connect Native women to one another through shared cultural experiences in and out of service.

Bring in the Flags

When Mitchelene Big Man (Apsáalooke/Hidatsa), founder and president of NAWW, established their color guard in 2010, she gave Native women a place to stand in ceremonies honoring veterans for the first time. Beforehand, Native women were mixed in with standard color guard groups, never fully receiving the spotlight they deserve.

“Prior to 2010, there wasn’t a big representation of women veterans,” Sanchezolmos reflects. “My sister is also a veteran, and there have been times when both of us have been pushed to the back. When the all-female color guard was established, we finally had a place where we could stand. Things are changing. They ask me to carry in the flags now.”

Since its creation, NAWW has participated in two presidential inaugurations, donated its ceremonial regalia to the National Museum of the American Indian, and honored veterans at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

“We are representing our people as a collective, of the people of the United States of America, the people of our tribes,” Holt Breen says. “If you don’t share, showcase, and pass that knowledge on, then it’s gone.”

Since the creation of NAWW and its color guard, Native Americans—and all the United States—can better point to representation of the important role they have played in serving their country and protecting their lands, as the descendants of the first nations to occupy them.

“It’s not just carrying flags,” Sanchezolmos says, “but it’s knowing that we served.”

Naomi Skiles is a writing intern at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She is a senior at American University studying anthropology and creative writing and is passionate about human connection in and out of her studies.