Transcript
I'm actually a Sac & Fox Nation
of Oklahoma tribal member,
so I'm an Indigenous person
of the United States.
My tribe is actually located in Oklahoma.
But we were originally from
Wisconsin, that area, Illinois,
the upper, near Michigan Bay,
those areas is where we
originally were from.
And whenever they removed them
and put them on reservations,
that's when we got moved
to Indian territory.
Enlisting for me was a challenge
as a Native American
person, indigenous person,
we prefer to be called indigenous people.
It was a real challenge for me personally,
but because I had other
male Veterans in my tribe
who encouraged me to continue on
and do what I needed to do for myself,
that kind of helped me overcome
some of those obstacles.
But it still was a challenge
from that point forward.
All the way up until I retired,
it was actually still a challenge
because there are still people
within the tribe that felt
because of our mistreatment
as indigenous people
by the U.S. government,
that I was kind of a
traitor to my own people.
And there was a few instance
where I had people actually confront me
and verbally get into altercations
with me over these things.
And some of them were
actually family members
that I still don't talk to to to this day.