Lori Piestewa National Native American Games {1st nations woman died in iraq invasion}

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http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/07/lori-piestewa-national-native-american-games/

In 2003, the Grand Canyon Staet Games announced the inaugural Lori Piestewa National Native American Games to honor Specialist Lori Piestewa, the first woman to die in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the first American Indian woman in history to die in combat.

This July 22-24th will mark the 10th anniversary of the Lori Piestewa National Native American Games. The seven-sport, three-day event will be held in the Fort McDowell, Salt River and Fountain Hills communities (for specific location information, visit gcsg.org/events/nativegames/maps.php).

SPC Lori Ann Piestewa, Hopi, a U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps soldier, was killed in action during an ambush in Nasiriyah, Iraq, in 2003 in the infamous battle that saw two other women, Shoshana Johnson and Jessica Lynch, injured. Lynch called Piestewa the true hero of the ambush (she successfully drove their Humvee at high speed through enemy fire until finally being hit by an RPG in the front-left wheel well) and was posthumously promoted from Private First Class to Specialist, receiving both a Purple Heart and a Prisoner of War Medal. In an article by Rolling Stone Magazine, Piestewa, known as “Pi” to her fellow soldiers, was recounted as being brave, calm, and compassionate. In one seminal moment for Jessica Lynch, the five-ton truck she was in that was hauling 400 gallons of water through the desert broke down. Lynch recalled being frightened and bewildered, until a Humvee rattled over. In it was Lori “Pi” Piestewa, Lynch’s roommate and best friend, who looked at her shaken friend and said, “Get in, roommate.”

The Lori Piestewa National Native American Games have been growingly steadily in the ten years of its existence. Featuring basketball, baseball, cross country, softball, track & field, volleyball and wrestling, the games have brought over 15,000 athletes ranging from 4 years-old to 78 from 21 states (plus Canada and the Bahamas), including 72 tribes.

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1. America’s Most Famous POW, Jessica Lynch, Honors the Hopi Woman Who Saved Her Life

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/07/america%E2%80%99s-most-famous-pow-jessica-lynch-honors-the-hopi-woman-who-saved-her-life/

The route leading to this longtime campsite amid the pines on the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho includes several miles of gravel road swooping through hilly farm country. Green with crops, it looks nothing like Iraq, but still gave Jessica Lynch a moment of flashback. “It was the dust,” Lynch says.

A car ahead of the one bearing Lynch to Talmaks Camp on Monday morning kicked up a cloud of dust that carried her back to March of 2003, when she was a 19-year-old supply clerk and private first-class in the U.S. Army driving a truck in the enormous military convoy racing across the desert to Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq by coalition forces. “All you were seeing was dust and sand and you had to follow the person in front of you by their taillights,” Lynch recalls. “We were exhausted and tired and hungry… ”

It was her experiences as a woman in combat in Iraq—she was taken prisoner by Iraqi troops after a vicious firefight—and her unlikely friendship with a young Hopi woman, Lori Piestewa, that prompted the Talmaks board of directors to seek out Lynch as a speaker at the annual camp, sponsored by the six Nez Perce Presbyterian churches on the reservation. Every Fourth of July the camp has a ceremony and a speaker to reflect on freedom, liberty and the price these concepts sometimes demand from people. Lynch delivered the 114th Oration at this ceremony that began in 1897. Slender, and with a sweep of blonde hair, the 28-year-old Lynch reflected on war and sacrifice for an audience that included a dozen Nez Perce veterans going back to World War II.

Talmaks board member JoAnn Kauffman sent an e-mailed invitation to Lynch in the spring but says she thought it was a long shot that Lynch would come speak in remote north-central Idaho on Independence Day. “As soon as I saw it was a Native American reservation, I was all for it,” Lynch says. “I just knew that my friendship with Lori … well it threw me over the top.”

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2. Yikes!

I can't believe it's been 10 years!

K&R!