In this final week of American Inidan Studies, I learned a lot by writing a paper about the Native American’s involvement in the World Wars. I learned a lot by researching them. One article I read was called “They Had a Chance to Talk to One Another…”: The Role of Incidence in Native American Code Talking. In this article by William Meadows, he talked about a lot of times when the Natives were set to be code talkers. There was actually a surprising amount. The very first one happened to be found by accident. There were two Natives talking in the Choctaw language, and the captain overheard them. He then talked with them a little bit and got them to the field to start up code talking.
Not only was it interesting to hear about how the Native code talkers, but in general, there were a lot of Native soldiers in the war. In Transnational Debts: The Cultural Memory of Navajo Code Talkers in World War II by Birgit Dawes, Birgit talks about how Native Americans weren’t even drafted because they were not considered citizens. Though the US still wanted to draft them, they could not. But one of the things I found very cool, was despite the horrible things that the US Government has done to the Native people, 12,000 soldiers volunteered for World War 1. And 44,000 for World War 2. This really demonstrates the kind of people that the Natives are. They are willing to fight and set aside their differences in order to protect the nation. I think that if everyone were to think like the Native Americans, we would all live in a better world. A world were not everyone is so stuck up and only looks out for themselves. Native people, though there may be some exceptions, are always willing to forgive. That’s such a huge part of who they are.