23-05-2025
Native veterans living and dead are remembered at Steele Indian School Park for Memorial Day
The Phoenix Indian Center and the Veterans Administration's Phoenix regional office honored Native veterans with a ceremony at Steele Indian School Park May 23.
The event was held at the American Indian Veterans Memorial at the park's central flagpole, part of the site of the now-closed Indian boarding school.
Among the speakers were descendants of Navajo Code Talkers, the Marines who used their ancestral language to create an unbreakable code during World War II, a Navajo woman veteran and Michael Welsh, deputy director for the Phoenix VA health care system. VA staff were also on hand to provide information and enroll veterans or their families for social service programs.
Shine Jozefiak, a Diné U.S. Air Force veteran who now works as a community care specialist at the VA, recounted her time serving in emergency rooms during Operation Enduring Freedom.
"I joined the Air Force to make my grandparents proud," said Jozefiak, who grew up on her grandparents' ranch outside Fort Defiance. Her grandfather Herbert Chee was a Korean War veteran.
Many Native people came through the emergency room, where Jozefiak and others would treat and prepare them to be transported to Germany for long-term treatment. "We remember hearing taps, and cried when we saw the flag draped over a coffin," she said. "When the doctors declared a soldier had died, everything stopped. You could hear a pin drop because you know what happened."
Jozefiak also said that she would speak in Navajo to wounded soldiers when they were brought in to the ER.
"'It's so good to hear our language so far from home,' they would tell me as I prepped them for transport," she said.
The honoring ceremony concluded with laying a hand-crafted wreath of red, white and blue flowers at the foot of one of the four pillars of the memorial. Each pillar commemorates a group of veterans who served and sacrificed for their nation, including Native veterans who paid the ultimate price for freedom.
Welsh said the employees made the four-foot-diameter wreath because they couldn't locate one that size.
Missing from the conversation was the fate of the tribal flags that had been on display in the lobby of the Phoenix VA Hospital for about 40 years. In March, the flags were unceremoniously removed in compliance with a new VA policy limiting which flags can be displayed on VA grounds.
Tribal VA staff, not wishing for the flags to be stuffed into a closet and forgotten, took them to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, which accepted them for safekeeping.
A week later, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs accepted the flags to be displayed in the Capitol Rotunda, where they now reside. Hobbs invited a group of Native veterans and tribal leaders to see the flags April 8.
"Phoenix Indian Center recognizes the importance of the Native community's military veterans over the years," said Warren Kontz, the Indian center's director of programs. "Native people have always protected their own lands."
Kontz, who belongs to the Muscogee Creek and Navajo nations, said Memorial Day reflects Indigenous resiliency.
"We recognize those who did not return," he said, "and we think of our ancestors who fought for this land."
Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @debkrol and on Bluesky at @
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix Indian Center, VA honor Native veterans for Memorial Day
