Gregory Edmonds’ presentation today reminded me of things I saw at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana during my trip west last fall.
The first is from a photo wall of 20 Crow women that had made major achievements in their fields. This woman is Laura Kindreness. Her service for 20+ years as a US combat veteran and paratrooper gives her the right to war a War Bonnet. How cool!!!
The second photo is of Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow. As Private Joseph Medicine Crow he led a squadron of seven, under heavy fire, assaulted German bunkers with TNT so the US Infantry could advance. He did not lose a single man. He was awarded the Bronze Star for Acts of Valor in combat. He was the last War Chief of the Crow Nation. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama at the same time Stephen Hawking and Desmond Tutu received theirs.
One of the things Mr. Edmonds mentioned early in his talk was that we were never taught these kinds of things at school. This is why I travel. The National Historic Parks, State Historic Sites, museums like this one and lecturers like Mr. Edmonds help fill in those gaps.
Just thought you might be interested to see a little more about “Native American Warriors of the 20th Century”. Neither of these people were mentioned in his talk. I ran home to check.
And unrelated to the talk but something some of you may be interested in is a lecture I went to on what goes into and the significance of traditional Elk Teeth Dresses. They are made with participation by the whole family. The men would save teeth from the elk they harvested and give the two largest teeth to the eldest female of the family. These teeth were then fastened on to usually buckskin dresses and worn for very special occasions, like graduations and then the dress was remade for use later by another family member and passed down. Now they don’t need to harvest so many elk, so the teeth are made of plastic but still the women dye and file the plastic “teeth” to make them look real. I was fascinated.
