Unbroken: Indigenous Peoples Today

Red and White Striped Lakota Regalia Cuffs

"You'll see some people have red lines going across their regalia like me, like right here on my cuffs. My three means how many deployments I've had. So I've had three deployments.

"I was in the Army National Guard. Originally I was just a truck driver and then and was an '88 Mike' (a type of motor transport supervisor), and then I got, I guess, 'volunteered' to be on the MiTT (Military Integrated Transitional Team). It's a coalition of the Army, Navy, Marines, all of us together to teach a different foreign military. I was in Iraq from '05 to '07 and we were the middle people between our military and their military. So we taught them how to be like us and we taught our military how to respect their culture and how to treat them.

"In my unit there were about 37 of us and we were the ones with the Iraqi Army, living with them, eating their food, going to their villages, teaching them how to be like us. So we, like, got in tight with a lot of interpreters who just loved us and wanted to help in any way they could to make their country more free.

"In a way I'm torn because our military has done some shady stuff to us. Even now, you remember back in like 2018 when the water protectors were up in Standing Rock, I saw military people I knew that were being assigned to go up there for deployments."

- Nick Ohitika Najin, Lakota Warrior

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