AMY GOODMAN: How did you end up becoming a peace activist, Sergeant Painted Crow?
SGT. ELI PAINTED CROW: Well, this is very important for me, because being Native, I don't see this as a war, number one. I see this as an invasion that’s committing a genocide to a nation, to a people. I see that we are over there and we are doing the same thing that we did here with the indigenous people of this land, calling it democracy, calling it freedom. Well, it isn't freedom if it’s imposed.
And what I learned about the Iraqi people, while I was there, was they're very much like the indigenous people here. They have clans, they have circles, they have their ceremonies, they have their drum. There are so many similarities, and it just really hurt me to realize that here I'm a survivor of this attempted genocide on my people -- and I say "attempted," because we're still here, even though they want to say we're not, we're erased, we're not even in the history books -- and here I am over there doing the same thing that was done to me, and so I --
AMY GOODMAN: You said that in the military they refer to Iraq as "Indian country"?
SGT. ELI PAINTED CROW: Well, they referred to -- what they said in the briefing, they called enemy territory "Indian country." And I'm standing there, just listening to this briefing, and I'm just in shock that after all this time, after so many Natives have served and are serving and are dying, that we are still the enemy, even if we're wearing the same uniform. That was very shocking for me to hear.
The above is from Democracy Now!'s "The Private War of Women Soldiers: Female Vet, Soldier Speak Out on Rising Sexual Assault Within US Military" which aired Thursday (International Women's Day) last week and is our pick for truest statement(s) of the week (plural).