Veteran liaison Juanita J. Mullen (Seneca Nation) consulted on the National Native Veterans Memorial at NMAI in Washington, D.C. She said of the winning design, “It’s beautiful. It represents us very well.”


Gunner’s Mate Marilee Spottedwolf (Northern Cheyenne), off Australia’s coast, is a third- generation Navy veteran.


in operations such as Desert Storm and October 2005 to November 2006 in Op- eration Iraqi Freedom. In her truck full of communications equipment, she would follow the troops until she was given the signal


to stop and set up—in less than


20 minutes. Parked just behind the front lines, she would have to tear down and pack every- thing up quickly and move to the next site within communications range of the soldiers, sometimes close enough to draw fire. “We had to stay with them no matter what,” she says. Sometimes they would do this for days at a time in the hot desert, eating cold food and taking sponge baths using their helmets. Such energy is hard to tame. After McEwing


retired in 2006, she struggled to find her new purpose. Then one day it came to her. She says, “I thought, ‘I will support soldiers.’” She founded the First Nations Women Warriors in 2014 to raise funds to build houses for homeless Native veterans. In March, the orga- nization broke ground on its first home, being built for Orville and Shirley Boni (Apache) on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona. Orville joined the Marine Corps right out of high school in 1970 and was immediately


22 AMERICAN INDIAN FALL 2020


thrust into the Vietnam War. A year of combat was enough to give him severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and drive him into alcoholism. Unaware of any benefits or as- sistance for veterans, he struggled to recover. Then he met Shirley. “Marriage was a great blessing for me,” he says. Finding Shirley and faith helped him survive. He says, “That is why I am living.” Forty years later, Orville is serving as a heavy equipment operator for the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. The couple is living with Orville’s son until their home is completed. McEwing and the Bonis celebrated the groundbreaking together. “It was an emotional ceremony,” says Shirley. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pan- demic has halted construction for now. Mary Louise LaForge served as a U.S. Air


Force Buck Sergeant from 1976 to 1983 and is now the veteran tribal outreach worker for her Crow Tribe in Montana. She says that Native li- aisons for tribal veterans are necessary because “a lot of the veterans don’t ask for help.” In addi- tion to being intimidated by all the paperwork, they are often not comfortable talking with non-Native people. As she is not only Crow but also a veteran, “I speak their language,” she


says. She does everything from helping them get healthcare benefits to applying for burial with military honors. She also helps them with basics like obtaining food and transportation to the nearest veterans clinic, which is 50 miles away. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she has to arrange televisits with doctors and counsel- ors for patients, including those suffering from PTSD and MST, or military sexual trauma. “Some of them were pushed to the point


of doing anything to get out, including tak- ing a less than honorable discharge,” says LaForge. She is now helping a couple of women who suffered MST to apply for their records to be amended. The women did so in response to the murder of U.S. Army Spe- cialist Vanessa Guillén. On April 22, 2020, Guillén disappeared from Fort Hood Army Base in Killeen, Texas. She is believed to have been the victim of sexual harassment, cul- minating in her brutal assault and murder. Guillén’s death has encouraged many women finally to speak out about the MST they en- dured. “They are just coming forward,” says LaForge “It is all coming to light.” Beginning in 1980, Juanita J. Mullen (Sen- eca Nation) served as a Traffic Management


PHOTO COURTESY OF MARILEE SPOTTEDWOLF


PHOTO BY NMAI STAFF


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