The Tinker Inter-Tribal Council hosted Cheyenne and Arapaho Honor Guard commander, Lena Nells, to reflect on her experience as a Native American servicemember and her cultural heritage for the Council’s Lunch and Learn Nov. 6 in the Tinker Chapel.
The event was hosted as part of the Council’s celebration of Native American Heritage Month and Nells’ presentation reflected the month’s theme of “Building Strength Through Understanding” by focusing on the work she has done to promote awareness for Native American contributions to the armed forces.
“The Native American community has the highest per capita rate of servicemembers,” Nells said. “Something I would like to note is that we are the original people to fight and die for this country, and we continue with that patriotism today. We are proud Americans as well as Native Americans.”
Nells, a full-blood native American of Cheyenne and Arapaho, Kickapoo and Navajo descent, is an Army veteran and currently works with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe's Office of Veteran Affairs in Concho, working in the Language and Culture Department as the Arapaho Projects Manager.
Her presentation expanded on the cultural background of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes and the historical context that ultimately brought them, and other Native American tribes, to Oklahoma through a series of renegotiated and broken treaties.
She discussed how there are several points in American history that continue to misrepresent key conflicts between the Native American tribes and the U.S. military as battles instead of massacres, and clarified that she and others were working to create a dialogue on these events.
Speaking on the significance of appreciation months at Tinker, Col. Paul Filcek, 72nd Air Base Wing commander, said that while there is no appreciation month for a demographic fundamentally more important than another, there were some that had a more significant tie to Oklahoma and that Native American Heritage Month represented one of those instances.
“That tie is tight and I think it is tight because nobody can say they have had the level of sacrifice and have exhibited a full-on patriotism any more than the Native American tribes,” said Filcek.