Not everybody that's a warrior has been to the service, but everybody that's been to the service is a warrior.

As I understand the story, a fellow by name of Happy Wise, who had died in 1945, had left this piece of land to the American Legion for the purpose of building a American Legion clubhouse.

The American Legion Post and the Wind River Development Fund teamed up to build the Frank B.

Wise Business Center where the American Legion now has office space.

The second thing that we agreed to was to build a memorial commemorating that the magnificent stuff that the natives have done as as far as the service goes.

Scott, along with Lisa Wagner of the Wind River Development Fund, worked with Lyle Wadda of the Fort Washakie American Legion Post.

They started developing plans for a fitting memorial to the veterans of the Wind River Indian Reservation, and we brought in an artist from Riverton by the name of Jon Cox.

The four of us kind of become the team to to make the decisions on what to do next.

And so Scott came to me and asked me, You know, what would you do?

But I sat for a little bit and thought, Here's what I'd like to do it.

It was a big it was a much grander scheme than I think what they had envisioned at first, but I presented it to them, this kind of what you're seeing right now.

And they took it.

We talked about some bronze sculpture.

We talked about building a pyramid of rocks, and ultimatel Jon drew out the first, the first stone on a piece of paper and the minute we all seen it, we we knew that, that it captured the spirit of what we wanted.

The group wanted to encapsulate what it means to be a warrior, a very important concept to those they were honoring For native people, The term warrior means a lot.

It's it's a badge of honor.

It's something that that we feel is is something that you take on as as a responsibility.

And it's been that way for for generations and years.

The warrior had a responsibility that they lived up to.

Native people have been participating in in the armed services long before we were actually citizens and had a significantly higher percentage than any other race in the United States.

I mean, just there's just a real pride in being a soldier, a warrior.

It was important to the American Legion Post that the memorial honor both native and non-native warriors that had ever lived within the boundaries of the Wind River Reservation.

We all served next to a variety of races, and so it was it's it's certainly a part of this, that everybody be welcome.

This is about military veterans, and I think that is one of the coolest things about this.

How it came to be is that there's been some division on the tribes inter-tribal and stuff.

They put everything aside to build this thing and they did and look at this.

So we have people from everywhere.

We have both tribes and blacks, whites.

If you lived on the reservation and you were a veteran, you have your name at the website here.

And some of the people on here like that right there is my dad He lived on the reservation for 20 years.

He was a Korean War veteran.

So they were so open and willing to allow everybody to be a part of this.

It really is.

It's cool.

It's also humbling.

I mean, it was really neat.

The design and construction process reflected the group's desire for the imagery to be representative of the Warriors who lived on the reservation.

Jon's skill as an artist brought their vision to life.

I had a scale model built of stones and a site layout at that point in time, and from there we just kept adding and buildin and saying it can only be there.

So it can be that we went to Vermont to a quarry for the granite.

And these are actually sand blasted in here.

My drawings, I sent them in a file and they sand blasted those onto the face of the stones the first stone represents from the scouting era.

And then the next era, you know, when all through the wars up to World War two and then the next one is Korea.

The next one is Vietnam and Desert Storm.

The last one is from there to a current.

There's some beautiful quotes on the back of the stones.

There's there's there's a lot of message in the faces and the activities on the front of it.

If you if you're able to get just right, the four stones line up and make the silhouette of a buffalo.

The buffalo is a significant part of the native survival.

You know, We used it for food and warmth and and tools and shelter and I mean on and on and on.

And so we felt it was very befitting that we that we try to bring that, that part of it into this memorial as well.

... On August twelve, 2021, the memorial was dedicated, over 400 people attended the emotional ceremony which included words from state dignitaries, tribal leaders and veterans.

It proves just how important the memorial is to the community.

I'm in awe.

I am absolutely in awe to think of the veterans that we have here today and to think of those that are in this program and the spirit that is here today.

It is, I think, recognized and you can feel it.

You can feel the horsepower in this room because of those that have gone before and those that have served, and you can feel it in this beautiful Wyoming day.

I bet I've talked to 300 people that have either at the dedication or have made the journey to come up here and without exception, every one of them has just really felt the warmth and wonderfulness.

When you go to war, you experience things that that are difficult.

They're they're they're haunting sometimes, and not everybody has that.

But but those that have it know what I'm talking about and and so we purposely put a red path throughout this memorial and in the native world, we call that red road, that path a healing path.

It's it's where we get our strength to start healing and.

And so for me, this has been part of that to be able to to to walk that path and and to turn loose some things that I needed to turn loose of and then just walk a little closer to the creator.