| Subject: After battle, two soldiers find some spiritual healing -Native Vets Did and Are Doing Their Duty |
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Date Posted: 15:57:38 12/03/01 Mon
After battle, two soldiers find some spiritual healing
Native Vets Did and Are Doing Their Duty
BY JODI RAVE LEE
Lincoln Journal Star
http://www.journalstar.com/nebraska?story_id=4765&past=
VERMILLION, S.D. - In the early morning before the sun breaks the horizon, a spirit horse brought back the two combat veterans' souls.
"I could hear it, smell it, feel its breath when it snorted and feel the breeze when it left," said Jim Brown of the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska. "I could hear his hooves on the ground."
In the daylight, there were no hoofprints; instead, only solace. After nearly 30 years of post-traumatic stress disorder, Brown and his friend Clifford Martell reunited with their spirits during a wakte gli, or Lakota healing ceremony for warriors.
Today Brown, behavioral health director for the Bemidji (Minn.) Area Indian Health Service, and Martell, director for the Family Living Center at the Leech Lake Tribal College in Cass Lake, Minn., know peace.
The ceremony proved to be powerful, said Martell, a Dakota: "That's when I learned to love. That's when I learned to cry." Each summer for the past four years, the vets have participated in the wakte gli near the Vermillion River in South Dakota.
Brown, an Army soldier, and Martell, a Marine, shared their story Oct. 19 at the Red Road Gathering, a Native healing conference that takes place each fall on the University of South Dakota campus.
The ceremony was difficult, but the men were strong, said Gene Thin Elk, a spiritual leader and an organizer of the Red Road Gathering.
"They walked through the valley of hurt and pain and came out on the other side. They came out with something powerful. They came out with forgiveness." Brown and Martell both served in Vietnam during the late 1960s and were among 42,000 Native men who fought there for America.
According to the U.S. Defense Department, of those numbers, 90 percent were volunteers.
Reliving the battle The men shared their healing story with those at last month's gathering. "I was a Marine," Martell said. "I was a good Marine. I was a sniper. I was a good sniper. That was my job, to kill. Like so many others, those lives that we take stay with us and remain with us for quite some time.
They eat away at our soul when we barely had any." Even though he returned from the jungle, the battle wasn't over. Vietnam was thousands of miles away, but the memories weren't. They became more real for both men during powwows.
When the traditional dancers dressed for a powwow, it was almost like preparing for war. They put on an eagle feather bustle instead of battle fatigues. They placed a porcupine roach piece on their head instead of a helmet. They wore a bone breastplate instead of a flak jacket. They carried a fur-wrapped staff instead of an M-16 machine gun.
Dressed in their new armament, Brown and Martell proudly wore their regalia into the dance arena. "When we were out there, we'd reminisce," said Martell. Once there, the men found a circle of friends - other veterans who shared their battle stories - each recounting time spent in the hot jungle.
But when the powwow was over, sadness set in. "When the powwow was done and everyone left, that was an unbearable feeling," said Brown.
A normal life After their tour of duty in Vietnam, the men were welcomed home. It's common for Native veterans of all wars to receive high honors and recognition in their communities.
Despite the accolades given a modern-day warrior, the men stepped back into a world that wasn't the same. They drank, fought, sabotaged relationships. Brown said he was "drinking for all the wrong reasons, drinking to get drunk. There was so much pain within me.
My spiritual world wasn't with me yet. I drank to pass out. I did so many terrible things in Vietnam, to kids, to women, to prisoners." He said he did what he was trained to do. "I was going to survive. I was a warrior.
They taught us how to kill - some of us did a damn good job at it." His tour of duty ended in 1968. "When we came home, no one taught us how to live, how to feel," said Brown.
"Coming home was probably the hardest thing I had to do." Although he openly talked about Vietnam, he said he was ashamed. His life was stymied by dysfunction, he said.
"What did it get us? Not a thing but to feel worse about who we are." He quit drinking in 1972 and later worked as an alcohol and drug treatment counselor in Sioux City, Iowa. No matter. "I thought I knew spirituality through AA (Alcoholics Anonymous)," said Brown.
"I didn't know shit. You call Ground Zero New York. For me, Ground Zero was right out there when I stepped out the door." As Martell spoke to the Red Road group, he advised those trying to heal:
"Don't hold it in. When you do, you end up like us. It tears you apart." He recalled how one day he "broke down and cried," and went to Brown's house. Both knew they needed help.
The healing journey About six years ago, Brown, who used to live in Vermillion, began talking with the Sun Dance community and Thin Elk, a cultural adviser on the University of South Dakota campus. He asked about using ceremonies to help warriors recover from traumatic battle experiences.
Thin Elk told the men to come to South Dakota for the wakte gli and the Red Road Gathering. "It was the best thing in my life," said Martell. "I can't explain it."
Part of their healing involved going "up on the hill" for typical four-day stretches each summer for the past four years. During that time, they prayed and fasted. "When I went to the hill, there was no negotiating," said Brown. "It was just me and the Creator . . . for me, that's the best therapy."
Native people could get better if they relied on the old ways, said Thin Elk: "We have powerful ceremonies." Each year on the hill, the men continued to heal and learn something different. Those experiences led a spirit horse to Brown, then Martell.
The vision scared Brown at first, he said, because the horse typically takes spirits to the other side - and does not bring them back. Before the horse came, Brown had a particularly fitful night. He remembers feeling like he was back in Vietnam, back in the jungle.
A Vietnamese grandma and grandpa visited him, too - to smile and forgive him. That night on the hill, he would also lock and load his weapon for the last time, letting the clip drop to the ground. "I heard a voice say: 'Clear your weapon. You're home.' "
Reach Jodi Rave Lee at 402-473-7240 or jrave@journalstar.com.
BY KEVIN ABOUREZKLincoln Journal Star http://www.journalstar.com/nebraska?story_id=4765&past=
It was supposed to be a milk run, a routine supply mission of a patrol unit in the field. But the muggy, Vietnamese afternoon spiraled out of control as Matt Jones' chopper crashed to the ground. The crash killed the pilot and mortally wounded the co-pilot and second gunner. Jones, with few medical supplies and little training, did what he could for his buddies for two hours until enemy soldiers forced him to take to the jungle.
The 53-year-old Kiowa-Otoe-Missouri described those two hours as the worst of his life. "That disturbed me more than when I extracted wounded," Jones said. "During that time, (the gunner) passed away. Thirty minutes later, the pilot died. About that time I started hearing the Vietnamese language being spoken."
In Vietnam, more than 42,000 Natives fought the communist North Vietnamese. More than 90 percent of Native men and women who fought in Vietnam were volunteers, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Native veterans number about 190,000 today, and Native people have the highest record of service per capita when compared to other racial groups, according to government figures.
They joined the military, in many ways, to fulfill the warrior tradition of their ancestors and to gain the respect of American society.
Ken Amen, 27, would agree.
The Omaha Native enlisted in the Army in March. He is now on alert to be shipped to the Middle East. With a cousin, great-grandfather and several uncles having served in the military, Amen said it seemed only natural for him to join.
"I still feel it's our country, and that's what I defend," he said.
Amen said he attended a powwow at the Lincoln Indian Center a few months ago in which he wore his Army coat and tie. He remembers a white veteran of World War II telling him he was proud to see young people still willing to serve in the military.
"For a brief moment, race was put aside, and we had something in common," Amen said. Native people have great respect for their veterans, who often become tribal leaders, Jones said. "For a Native person, warrior status is probably the highest status you can get," he said. His people's tradition of military service guided him through Vietnam, Jones said. It also guided him through the alcoholism that nearly destroyed him years later.
It was an affliction that started with the fear of a 19-year-old boy lost in the misty jungles of Vietnam. Shortly after two friends died near his downed helicopter, Jones set off on an 18-day journey through the jungle back to American lines with the enemy unit following.
Jones eventually stumbled into an ambush by American soldiers. The G.I.s, thinking he was part of a larger North Vietnamese patrol unit, waited until he and the three enemy soldiers behind him walked into their ambush zone. Recognizing Jones as an American, they opened fire on his pursuers, killing all three.
"I played a little cat-and-mouse for 18 days with those guys," he said last week, sighing as if fresh from the jungle canopy. "I got four of them."
When Jones returned to the States, he tried to forget the things he saw in Vietnam. Still, the fear and grief he tried to suppress continued to haunt him, driving him to drink, until his wife divorced him in 1984. It was a wake-up call for Jones, who sobered up with the help of his family and Native cultural traditions.
Jones remembers with fondness the support his uncle gave him. The old Korean War veteran would listen to him and share his own war experiences.
Because so many Native people are veterans, Native soldiers tend to have plenty of emotional and psychological support, Jones said, support he couldn't have done without.
"Our people talk about their experiences in war," he said. "I think that has helped us heal a lot better."
Reach Kevin Abourezk at 402-473-7237 or kabourezk@journalstar.com.
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