COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Youth of Color
In tribes, tug of enlistment
Bryan Bender, Boston Globe
October 1, 2007
KICKAPOO INDIAN RESERVATION, Kansas - Sitting behind her desk at
tribal headquarters, Candace Wishkeno proudly displayed a photo of
her daughter, Jessica, smiling broadly in her Army uniform against
the backdrop of an American flag.
"She joined to get money for school," said Wishkeno, 39, a copy of
Jessica's dog tags dangling around her neck. "She wants to go to
school to be an elementary teacher."
Jessica Wishkeno's decision to enlist - motivated by a desire to
serve and a need for money - has been replicated by a record number
of Native Americans every year since Sept. 11, 2001. On isolated
reservations like this one, where unemployment rates can run as high
as 70 percent, a $20,000 signing bonus and the promise of money for
college can be enticing.
In the six years since the Army began counting Native American
recruits, the numbers have soared.
Those signing up for active duty increased more than 50 percent from
683 in 2001 to 1,048 in 2006. The number who have joined the Army
Reserve has increased sevenfold over the same period - from 35 in
2001 to 253 last year, according to the US Army Recruiting Command.
There are about 22,000 Native Americans in all the services, a
proportion corresponding to roughly twice their share of the population.
With the Army still struggling to meet its enlistment targets,
recruiters have intensified their outreach to Indian tribes, staging
job fairs at tribal events.
In places such as South Dakota, with numerous vast reservations, the
military has assigned special recruiters to focus solely on Native
Americans. In some tribes, including the Kickapoo, recruiters have
persuaded tribal elders to encourage young people to enlist in the
military as a way of preserving their tribal warrior traditions.
In Lawrence, Kan., recruiters say they find students at the Haskell
Indian Nations University more receptive than those at the nearby
University of Kansas.
"They are more patriotic. Their parents are more patriotic," Army
Sergeant Shelton J. West said while sitting in his office at the
Lawrence Army Career Center.
West, whose decade-long career as an Army recruiter has taken him to
South Dakota, Alabama, and other rural states, said that economic
hardship is one reason why Native Americans are drawn to the
military. But in his experience "when a Native American joins it is
usually to defend the country."
It is a long tradition. Despite the uneasy, often violent history
with the US government, American Indians have been putting their
lives on the line for their homeland since World War I, even though
they were not granted citizenship until 1924.
"American Indians have volunteered to serve their country at a higher
percentage in all of America's wars and conflicts than any other
ethnic group on a per capita basis," said Don Loudner, national
commander of the National American Indian Veterans Association,
headquartered in Walker, La.
The Kickapoo Nation - which lived in modern-day Ohio and Michigan
before the arrival of Europeans and was forced onto steadily smaller
tracts of land - has redirected its tradition of defending its land
toward the US military.
On the Kickapoo reservation, about 35 miles north of Topeka, a
POW/MIA flag flies above the tribal office. The lead news item in the
local paper last week announced an upcoming meeting about veterans'
benefits at the American Legion hall in nearby Powhattan.
One need only walk a few steps between the tribal office and the
trading post to find at least five residents with family members now
serving in the military. And many of their kin, like 22-year-old
Jessica Wishkeno, an ammunition specialist, are heading to the front
lines in Iraq, where at least 40 Native Americans have died since the
2003 US invasion, according to Defense Department data.
But perhaps the clearest sign here of the tribe's tradition of
sacrifice is the nearly 100 members whose names are etched on the
monument in Kickapoo Veterans Memorial Park - a strikingly high
number of veterans for a tribe that has 1,753 members, 700 of them
living on the reservation.
Those who have returned from military service now have a special
place in the tribal hierarchy.
"No one is more respected in Indian society than a Native American
veteran," said Russell Bradley, 65, a Vietnam veteran and member of
the Kickapoo tribal council whose 27-year-old son, Felix, is
preparing to leave for his second tour in Iraq with the Marine Corps.
While the sense of American patriotism is strong, Bradley said, so,
too, is the lure of a paycheck.
"Most reservations are so isolated. There are not a lot of jobs," he
said, adding that farming has proven to be too risky and a frequent
lack of water has hurt chances of attracting a viable manufacturing base.
The two main sources of jobs on the reservation are a small casino,
opened in 1996, and a bare-bones convenience store and gas station.
Sag-Tuk Banks, 27, whose heritage is Kickapoo and Potowatomi Indian,
is preparing to return to Iraq this fall for his third tour, this
time with the Oklahoma National Guard.
The father of three was discharged from the Marine Corps in 2005
after four years, but said that for the next year he struggled to
support his family.
He kept driving past a nearby National Guard recruiting office, and
one day in 2006 he finally went in. When the recruiter told him he
would get a $20,000 bonus, he immediately reenlisted.
"I couldn't find a good-paying job," Banks said by phone from Ponca
City, Okla., where his unit was training to go to Iraq.
Banks's mother, Tina Wahwasuck, 44, helps run the Kickapoo trading
post and said she has deep misgivings about her son's upcoming tour.
"I am more scared than I was the first time," she said.
The mother of three was relieved, she said, when her younger son, 18,
recently failed the aptitude test to join the military. And she says
her 16-year-old daughter talks about enlisting when she is old
enough, but the prospect of serving in Iraq has given her second thoughts.
Banks's grandmother, Donnis Keo, who has another grandson, Stryder
Banks, heading to Iraq this fall, said young people might not be so
quick to enlist if there were more opportunities.
"For them it's a way to get away from the reservation, " she said.
"Everybody needs money."
As with many military families, there are also worries that the new
class of veterans will not get the support they need when they come
back. Wahwasuck said her son exhibits signs of post-traumatic stress
disorder. "He jokes all the time, but he hides it," she said. "A lot
of people don't see it the way I see it."
The nearest veterans' hospital to the Kickapoo reservation is more
than an hour away. What "helps him [cope] most," she said, are the
ritual drum services held here on the reservation.
Candace Wishkeno, meanwhile, wonders whether her daughter, Jessica,
will still want to be an elementary teacher when she returns from Iraq.
"After all she has been through I don't know that she'll want to do
it. She's gotten pretty tough."
She said the Army sent Jessica to "fat camp" to prepare her for basic training.
"They must have wanted her pretty bad," said Wishkeno, adding, "She
drives trucks with grenades and ammunition. Why couldn't she be a nurse?"
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