To celebrate Native American Heritage Month, the Pentagon has gone all out with ceremonies across the United States, from an Air Force-sponsored intertribal powwow in Florida to a celebration of Native American aircraft nose art in Oregon.

The military has also been pumping out feel-good stories about Native American troops: one South Dakota National Guardsman from the Oglala Sioux tribe was allowed to grow out his hair, and an Air National Guardsmen from the District of Columbia who belongs to four different tribes reflected in his Lakota, Seneca, Navajo, and Comanche heritage.

“Acknowledging Native veterans and Native contributions is terrific. And there are a lot of proud Native veterans. But it’s one of those gestures that is nice in theory but is, perhaps, meant to whitewash how we understand Native American history and how Native Americans ended up in the place that we did,.

Another expert on the topic put it more bluntly. “The Army was, bottom line, an instrument of a settler colonial empire that was determined to convert Native lands into private property for mostly white settlers “That was its mission: to carry out a federal government policy that, in practice, often became a genocidal war.”