A memorial will open next year in Washington DC to honor Native American and Alaska Native military service members and veterans. The structure will be called the “Warriors’ Circle of Honor,” and will be built outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall. The memorial will honor the more than 156,000 active military service members and veterans who are Native Americans and Alaska Natives. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in September and will be followed by a dedication on Veterans Day in November 2020. The memorial is designed by Harvey Pratt, a Cheyenne and Arapaho, who served in Vietnam as a Marine. He was selected after a nationwide competition and said the memorial is meant to be a place of “gathering, remembrance, healing and reflection.”
“The idea was to honor the long tradition of service among Native Americans in the armed forces,” said Rebecca Trautmann, the museum’s curator for the memorial. “Most Americans don’t realize that Native Americans have served since the Revolutionary War and in every major war at a high rate.”