From Ira Hayes to Lori Piestewa, Arizona’s Indigenous war heroes were literally erased from the annals of military history last month as part of the Trump administration’s attack on DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — within the U.S. Department of Defense.
President Donald Trump has been on a mission to do away with DEI since becoming commander in chief again, ordering what he dubbed an “end to all of the lawless diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense.”
The Pentagon’s self-described “digital content refresh” to delete any references of “critical race theory, gender ideology and identity-based programs” flagged at least 26,000 photos, videos and blog posts for removal across all DOD public platforms by March 5.
Also wiped in the purge — albeit temporarily — were the Navajo Code Talkers, as many as 420 enlisted Marine Corps men who transmitted encrypted messages during World War II by using a code based on their Diné language.
While the Pentagon blamed artificial intelligence for scrubbing websites that have since been restored, the agency’s actions still linger throughout the Navajo Code Talker community.
Trump tasked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with this duty. Fox News commentator Jesse Watters recently asked his former colleague about his agency’s progress during primetime television.
“DEI is not going well at the Defense Department, because it’s dead. The president said in his inaugural, ‘We will be merit-based and colorblind,’” Hegseth responded. “Jesse, one of the dumbest phrases in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength.’”
Navajo Nation poet laureate Laura Tohe disagrees.
“If it wasn’t for our diversity of languages in this country,” said Tohe, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University, “we may not have had a code that was quick, accurate, never broken and saved many American lives.”
“And I wondered what he would think,” added Tohe, who interviewed 20 combat buddies of her late dad, Navajo Code Talker Benson Tohe. “My father would be appalled. They wanted to leave a legacy for not only their families and relatives, but for the rest of America.”
During Trump’s first term, three Navajo Code Talkers — Fleming Begaye, Thomas Begay and Peter MacDonald Sr. — went to the White House in 2017. They met him in the Oval Office, hoping to earn Trump’s support to build a museum that has since broken ground in 2022 near Window Rock at Tse Bonito, New Mexico.
“Well, we’re still waiting for the promise that came from President Trump, that he will help us,” said 96-year-old MacDonald, one of only two living Navajo Code Talkers. “He gave us an opportunity to tell the world what Navajo Code was all about.”
Since then, a second Trump term has taken aim by getting rid of DEI history from military websites, banning hundreds of books from military academy libraries and ousting so-called “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” narratives from the Smithsonian Institution.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, which houses exhibits honoring Native war heroes — including the Navajo Code Talkers — told KJZZ that the museum “isn’t commenting on another agency’s website.”
MacDonald, a former Navajo Nation chairman, still thanks Pentagon leadership for swiftly fixing the problem stemming from artificial intelligence mistakenly deleting references to the term “Navajo.”
“Removal was bad, and I consider it to be a serious mistake,” he insisted. “We’re hopefully back on track to understand that Navajo Code was a weapon, [the] most beautiful weapon that was ever designed in modern history.”
“No different than [the] Apache helicopter was a weapon, no different than tanks that operated in water and on land,” added MacDonald. “It has absolutely nothing to do with DEI.”
He’s convinced their history of service and sacrifice is safe.
“Now it’s in the hands of human beings, people who think, and they are restoring a lot of these stories. That’s the way it should be,” MacDonald said. “Every military unit across the nation should learn how and why Navajo Code was developed to help win the war in the Pacific.”
In a statement, Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot expressed that “everyone at the Defense Department loves the Navajo Code Talkers,” adding “we salute them for their strong and, in many cases, heroic service to our country, full stop.”
He also emphasized the agency does not “view or highlight them through the prism of immutable characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or sex,” stressing that in rare cases when content is removed — either deliberately or by mistake — that is clearly beyond the scope of its DEI directive, they will correct the course.
Even Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren labeled it a “mishap.”
“As sovereign nations, we are not defined by DEI classifications,” Nygren said in a statement. “We are political sovereigns with treaties and a long-standing relationship with the U.S. government.”
“Presidents of Indigenous nations, people in positions where they have to deal with the federal government on a regular basis can’t really just fly off the handle and say what they really feel,” said Zonnie Gorman, who is Diné and a leading Navajo Code Talker military historian. “They have to play the political game.”
“They’re probably trying to stay on an even keel right now,” she added. “It’s very scary, because the government could really come in and do a tremendous amount of damage to Native communities, speaking of land, water. I mean, we could lose everything.”
Her tribe’s relationship with the U.S. dates back to the 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo.
“Native peoples gave up lands and resources in order to abide by these treaties that were signed between my tribe and the government,” Tohe mentioned. “We feel that is something the U.S. should recognize and honor. That’s just wrong, disrespectful to what the Navajo Code Talkers gave to this country.”
“It’s a Diné story. It’s a Marine Corps story. It’s an American story. And so, this thing that quote, unquote Buu Nygren calls a mishap, you know, sparked something,” added Zorman. “That’s not to diminish Ira Hayes, all of the unnamed Indigenous people that served. By erasing those that are named, you erase all those that are not named.”
She’s also the daughter of the late Carl Gorman — one of the original 29 Navajo Code Talkers — who drafted the unbreakable code that was declassified in 1968.
“I’ve talked about Code Talkers for 30-plus years, and this week has been the most difficult,” admitted Gorman, reflecting on last month’s DEI directive. “What’s happening right now is not just one small incident. It’s part of a larger movement in this country, which is unprecedented.”
Trump’s anti-DEI agenda is also changing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Arizona’s 22 tribal flags displayed at the Carl T. Hayden Veterans’ Administration Medical Center in central Phoenix were taken down last month and sent to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community — until Gov. Katie Hobbs found them a new home at her office inside the Executive Tower.
While the VA acknowledges federally recognized tribes as sovereign, the agency told KJZZ their flags can now only be flown over its facilities during “dignitary visits and special ceremonies,” citing a new flag policy.
Tohe considers the Trump administration’s string of sudden actions a wake-up call.
“Our stories were not important enough to keep,” she said, “and that’s a very sad thing to say about our government. It’s going to be up to us, the descendants, to push back, to protect this legacy, and we can’t just let that slip into invisibility again. Our stories are already invisible.”
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