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Facts and Events
Pfc. Lori Piestewa was the daughter of a Vietnam veteran and the granddaughter of a World War I veteran. She was a source of pride for Tuba City, Ariz., a town of 8,200 people on the Navajo Reservation but close to Hopi land.
Piestewa, a single mother raising a 4-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl, enlisted in the Army two years ago and had served as a commanding officer of Junior ROTC in high school.
“She will be remembered as a daughter, as a proud mother of two, as a good friend able to comfort others in distress,” said Hopi Tribal Chairman Wayne Taylor.
— Associated Press
References
- ↑ PFC Lori Ann Piestewa, in OIF-OEF Casualties (2003)
23 March 2003.
Lori Ann Piestewa (23), Pfc., Army; Assigned to 507th Maintenance Company, Fort Bliss, Texas (Hometown: Tuba City, Ariz.) Died 3/23/2003. Killed in an ambush near Nasiriyah, Iraq.
- PFC Lori Piestewa, in "Mom, Hopi, hero: Piestewa an icon"
April 2003.
By Billy House and Mark Shaffer
Arizona Republic/Associated Press
Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa has become the nation’s most recognizable Native American military icon since Ira Hayes helped raise the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima.
Just ask retired Army Col. Tom Spencer of Hampstead, N.C., about the impact of her death in Iraq.
He flew to Denver on April 9 so he could meet another retired military friend, drive nearly 500 miles to Piestewa’s hometown of Tuba City, Ariz., attend a memorial service for Piestewa on April 11 and donate money to the scholarship fund for her two small children.
“It’s important to pay our soldierly respects,” Spencer said.
That is just one small aspect of the bigger story that has captured worldwide attention. Consider:
• A national memorial for women military veterans in Washington is seeking items of Piestewa’s clothing for an exhibit.
• Tens of thousands of dollars are flowing into memorial accounts bearing her name.
• Newspaper articles and media requests from all over the world for interviews with her family and others who knew her continue daily.
• Piestewa, 23, has been the focus of spots on programs as varied as “Hardball With Chris Matthews” and “Good Morning America.”
• A move is afoot to rename Squaw Peak in Phoenix after Piestewa.
But why has Piestewa captured the world’s imagination and become a focal point for national grieving over all lost soldiers?
She is believed to be the first Native American woman killed in combat in a foreign war.
She was a single mother with two small children, a boy, 4, and a girl, 3.
She has become a symbol of the danger for all women in the combat zone.
She came from the same environs that produced the famed Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, who have enjoyed a recent renaissance in the public spotlight because of last year’s movie “Windtalkers.”
And, with the number of U.S. war dead in Iraq at just over 150, the media focus on the victims has been concentrated and intense, especially on those with unusual backgrounds like that of Piestewa.
“People want to have some way to respond to all of this tragedy. And Lori, being a single mother, a Native American — in spite of everything she had to lose — went off and did everything she could do,” said Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., whose district includes the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona.
“Because she stands out as a little bit different, she gives us all someone with which to try to personify the losses we feel.”
Others agree.
“The thing that strikes me about this is where there are massive amounts of casualties, it is very difficult to make that real. So, there’s a tendency to pick one individual to focus on,” said Linda Grant De Pauw, president of the Maryland-based Minerva Center, a non-profit educational foundation supporting the study of military women and women in war.
“Her story brings a number of things together: the Native American element, a woman in war, being a mother, and the current military action. All of those are brought into focus in an emotional way,” De Pauw said.
To some degree, the nation’s collective grieving over Piestewa is a product of the speed and reach of modern media, eager to dispense the news that she was the first woman known killed in the Iraq war and possibly the nation’s first Native American woman ever killed in combat.
Eric Ehst, spokesman for the Phoenix/Scottsdale chapter of the National Organization for Women, said: “This is a woman who died for her country doing what she was supposed to be doing. She wasn’t some innocent bystander. … She was young, a single mother and capable.”
Piestewa’s story also enhances the status of all Native Americans, said Leo Chischilly, director of the Navajo office of Veterans Affairs.
“The Code Talkers alerted this country to the contributions of Native Americans in war,” Chischilly said. “And even though we are all very sad about the death of Lori Piestewa, her death gives us a great deal of pride about ourselves.”
Gary Laderman, a professor of religion at Emory University in Atlanta, is inclined to believe interest in Piestewa will be long-lasting.
“It’s hard to say,” he said. “But her ethnic-religious status as a marker of identity likely makes this something that will not just disappear. I imagine her name on mountains, streets and other kinds or forms of memorializations that will keep her in mind.”
- ↑ Army Spc. Lori Piestewa (Hopi) was aware of Indian women who served America before her. This 23-year-old soldier became the first service woman killed in action in Iraq, and the first American Indian woman killed in combat. Her death, on March 23, 2003, touched a grateful nation and changed the name of the most prominent mountain near Phoenix to Piestewa Peak.
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