Native American Heritage Month Celebration

Clay Ward, thank you.

Let me add my grateful acknowledgement to the Native peoples upon whose ancestral homelands we’re gathered, including the Nacotchtank and Piscataway peoples, and to the Native communities who make their home here today.

Stephanie Birdwell, and to the panel members—Lynn Brownfield, Jason Latona, Minnie Bowie Garcia, Travis Trueblood­—thank you for sharing your stories and experiences.

Rudy Soto, thank you for joining us this morning and for your important words to us here at VA.

Lance Fisher, thank you for gifting us your songs.

In his proclamation urging us to observe Native American Heritage Month, President Biden emphasized that “we must know the good, the bad, and the truth of who we are as a Nation—we must acknowledge our history so that we can begin to remember and heal.” I’d therefore like to close our time by acknowledging two such stories, and interconnected ones at that.

Will McClammy serves as the Compliance Officer at the Eastern Kansas VA Health Care System in Topeka. Will is Assiniboine, Sioux, and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. He’s also a former airborne artilleryman, a Gulf War Army Veteran, a third-generation Vet, in fact.

Will initially encountered VA when he discovered firsthand the need for improved rural services in Indian Country. He witnessed how his own father, who relied on VA health care, fought to overcome massive barriers to access, often driving hours from the Fort Peck Reservation to his medical appointments, with some trips spanning multiple days just so that he was well enough to drive himself back home again afterwards.And at the conclusion of his own uniformed service, Will found himself navigating his own health care through the two separate systems of the Indian Health Service and VA, all while simultaneously trying to utilize his GI Bill benefits to attend college. Imagine trying to figure all that out.

Drawing on this experience and his earlier memories of VA, Will eventually settled in Topeka precisely to work on improving care and access for other rural and Native Veterans. Providing a “hand up” to fellow Native Vets convinced Will that VA is, in his words, “right where I need to be, right where I want to be.”

Will’s work on behalf of a community at times rightfully suspicious of government has also taken the form of concurrent duty as the VISN 15 Tribal Outreach Coordinator—building trust with Native American Vets across Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois. And much of his outreach work involves careful learning and sharing of stories, past and present. You see, Will helps to build trust by acknowledging and retelling stories from the community, just one of which is that of Elwin “Al” Shopteese.

Al was an enrolled member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation who enlisted in the Kansas National Guard in 1940, immediately after high school graduation. During World War II, as his infantry regiment fought through Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, Al was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart and, notably, earned the exceptional honor and responsibility of a battlefield commission for his leadership during the combat at Omaha Beach. After the war, Al returned to Kansas to study business at the Haskell Institute before he then continued his military service during the Korean War.

Now, on special assignment, Will and a team of colleagues sought to learn more about Al, studying service records and archival documentation. But their research didn’t, and couldn’t, end there. For as Muscogee poet Joy Harjo has said, indigenous communities don’t store their memory “in books and on papers.” It was in the stories told by Al’s tribe, family, and friends, therefore, that Will’s team could learn the fuller narrative of Al’s life.

You see, they learned that upon return from war, Al devoted himself to his community and to his tribe.He served as a Potawatomi Tribal Council member and travelled here to Washington, D.C. many times to advocate for his people. He worked to establish the financial security of the tribe, preserving and ensuring their self-determination for generations to come. And for more than twenty years, Al served as a substance abuse counselor, helping form Indian Community Alcoholism Resources Expeditors, known as ICARE, even then. Until his death in 1992, Al worked tirelessly to provide help and healing to those in his community who were suffering and in pain.

Will and his team learned Al’s fuller story, and they’ve since helped retell it to a degree when the Captain Elwin Shopteese VA Clinic in Kansas City, Kansas, was formally named just this past summer. His own contributions drawing parallels in my mind, Will is proud to retell Al Shopteese’s story—a Veteran caring for other Veterans, a leader caring for his community. Will is proud to share the story on behalf of Al’s family and tribe, proud to offer them honor and recognition.

We must learn and retell stories like those shared today to ensure the experiences of Native American Veterans are, indeed, acknowledged and honored. Both the good and the bad. For while they serve among the highest per capita rates, Native American Vets so often fought abroad for their country just to return to fight prejudice, racism, and injustice here at home.

Truthful storytelling also requires authentic representation, ensuring Native voices and perspectives are fully welcomed and truly belong.So, to our 7,450 Native American and Alaska Native VA colleagues—2,125 Veterans among them—your unique perspectives make VA stronger. We welcome your stories and your memories to the sacred mission we share. You belong here. We recommit ourselves to listening intently, to understanding and honoring your needs, your challenges, your traditions, your communities. We stand ready to learn, and to echo, your stories told, and sung, and remembered. It’s these stories of community and tradition, of courage and perseverance, of survival and resistance that we so deeply need to hear and retell.

It’s an honor to share with you in celebration today. Thank you for inviting me to join you this morning.