Forgotten Souls
by Shawn Fisher

If you were to assume that a feminist is merely someone you would read about in history books, you would be wrong. Feminism is not relegated to those who would publicly seek equal empowerment through protest and politics. Often the greatest role models for feminism are those individuals who quietly, through their life choices, their jobs, their behavior and their personal moral code set a standard to inspire those around them.

The question then becomes, why don’t we ever see these individuals, where are the headlines about them, where are the television movies of the week, and the A&E Specials, especially when they have died for their beliefs? The sad truth is because they don’t give “good face” by the opinion of the mainstream media; they can’t sell the ratings. You see, it seems more and more apparent by their broadcasts that it’s more important for our newspapers, news radio broadcasts and TV news programs to put on someone that will boost sales and/or ratings. Good role models and historical relevance are irrelevant considerations in the making of a contemporary hero by the modern media.

When dealing with unpopular types of women or subjects the American media prefers not to deal with them at all. Now, “unpopular types of women” do not necessarily mean women who are hated by a large group, such as the religious Right’s disdain for Senator Hillary Clinton. On the contrary, the right’s extreme feelings for Senator Clinton only compel them to want even more information on her. As such, the media can package and sell more of Hillary to the public. The unsellable, the true unpopular are those deep dark secrets that, as a society, we don’t like to think about or look at such as women of diverse ethnic backgrounds or political beliefs.

In recent years America has produced and then quickly forgotten two such women of substance, one a soldier, the other a civilian, both involved in unjust wars.
Take for consideration PFC Lori Piestewa. Haven’t heard of her? Not surprising. Surely though you have heard of her best buddy and comrade-at-arms PFC Jessica Lynch. Yes! See you have heard of her, but did you honestly think that Private Lynch went out on her own against an army of great magnitude like some Rambo movie? Actually Private Lynch was far from alone that night, there were others who served side by side with her and died that night in service to their country.

PFC Lori Piestewa was born a true American into one of the 500 nations of the Americas that managed to survive the Anglo founded United States movement westward. As a member of the Hopi people or Hopituh Sinom, which operates as a matrilineal (female dominated) clan, Lori was raised with a cultural belief system that strictly encompasses a concept of the individual existing in a state of total reverence and respect for all things, to be at peace with these things. Lori, like all U.S. reservation-bound Americans, was considered both Hopi and a U.S. citizen. She grew up on a reservation controlled by the Hopi, but shared by the Navajo, a poorer than poor backwater land that was given back to the Hopi after all their fertile lands were taken by the U.S. Nonetheless, she descends from a family that believed in potential of what the U.S. could become and stepped up in time of need to serve in its armed forces. Her grandfather served in World War II and her father in the Vietnam Conflict. Lori continued the family tradition by first joining the junior ROTC program at her local high school where she served as a Commanding Officer leading her classmates in drills and then later on, joining the US Army.

Following high school Lori married and mothered two children first her son, Brandon and then her daughter, Carla. Unfortunately, the marriage failed and Lori was left to raise her children almost entirely alone, save for her parents. Having always been interested in serving in the military and more importantly looking to provide the best possible future for her children Lori enlisted in the United States Army. Being a soldier for Lori as for all Hopi meant more then to serve the United States but her own people and family as well. So Lori left her children in the care of her parents and went off to serve. After boot camp she became part of the U.S. Army’s 507th Maintenance Company based out of Fort Bliss Texas. The 507th is a support group which typically stays behind the main push of the front line forces when in a combat mission. This allowed for Lori to maintain her pacifist ideals while still serving her nations.

While at Fort Bliss Lori became roommates with PVT Jessica Lynch a slightly younger Anglo-American. The two became the best of friends and when word came that their Company would be going to Iraq, Lori and Jessica’s friendship was carried over there. It is in Iraq where Lori’s strengths in commitment to duty and to serve truly come to light. Prior to departure from Fort Bliss Lori had injured her shoulder, this injury would have allowed her to stay state-side and avoid the horrors of war. Lori though decided otherwise and understated her injury to gain medical clearance for transfer into the theatre of war. It was from there that most are familiar with the story at least as how it was to affect PVT Lynch. Three days into the invasion the 507th‘s convoy made a wrong turn and headed right into an ambush with Lori at the wheel of one of the Humvees. As the battle began to unfold, the officer she was transporting ordered her to move from the rear of the convoy to the front to confer with the unit’s Captain. It was at this point that Lori was offered her second out. The Captain’s driver offered to switch places with her since it was the rear of the convoy that was taking the brunt of the fight. But, she refused saying she was sticking to the mission and then promptly retook her position towards the rear of the convoy. Shortly after that, while she was giving aid to other damaged vehicles, her Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Three of her teammates instantly died and she and PVT Lynch were captured by Iraqi soldiers and taken to a local hospital where Lori died alone in agony and PVT Lynch was rescued by Special Forces and made a hero for living. While Lori who turned down not one, but two offers to avoid dangers, saved no less then the two lives of those who would have taken her place and is hardly remembered at all.

So if Lori is such a hero, if she lived up to the embodiment of the American Soldier sacrificing her life for others, if in her practices, whether realizing it or not, she invoked the spirit behind feminism by taking control of her life and making bold decisions to provide and serve her family and her two nations and she has, should she be considered a great icon of Feminism to The United Sates and The Hopi, absolutely, yet where is her well earned fame? A Google search of the two names reveals the disparity of the friends (PVT) Jessica Lynch received an astonishing 1,750,000 hits while (PFC) Lori Piestewa received a paltry 44,800 hits. This is a massive gap to say the least. All her friend Lynch did was survive, and she was vastly rewarded by the media for her actions. Lori gave her life and at best the media used her to place PVT Lynch on an even higher pedestal.

What difference between the two personas could make one sought after as a hero and one forgotten? It goes back to giving good face, the media is only interested in ratings and often dealing in the truth means lower ratings. In the case of ethnicity PVT Lynch fits the preconceived notion of the All-American-girl perfectly she is a fair-skinned blonde-haired blue eyed Anglo, the dominant race in the United States since its conception. While Lori was Hopi a true native to this land dark hair and bronze skinned she still represents simultaneously in the back of white Americas mind anyway, both the disdain of a perceived barbaric people and the guilt of an almost successful attempt at genocide.

Let us not forget her Pagan roots. In a nation built on the concept of freedom of religion it seems that it was really meant to be implied freedom of Christian belief. Lori’s Hopi ancestry is too much for this society to handle. The thought of believing in something other then the Christian god, red state housewives would have kittens. Speaking of the red states they also have a problem with having to think about divorce and being a single parent as such Lori as a hard working, loving single mother is an abomination to their eyes and the media would not risk offending such a key demographic.

So at final glance to the left we have a the dark hair, bronze skinned single parent of Pagan origin who gave her life for two nations and in the process saved at least two lives. To the right we have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed single woman of Christian origin whose life was saved at the risk of others, and in the process probably saved the ratings of a few faltering networks. Is the real tragedy the death of Lori’s body or the death of her existence?

Enter Rachel Corrie, neither a soldier nor a parent, just a college student and simply someone who saw a wrong being done and acted to correct it. This action cost Rachel her life. This blonde-haired blue-eyed 23-year-old Evergreen State College student had everything going for her, good family and friends and a budding academic career. She grew up in Olympia, the capital of the State of Washington. Her father, Craig, worked in insurance and her mom, Cindy, was a school volunteer. This picturesque Norman Rockwell candidate graduated from Capital High School, and then attended The Evergreen State College, a University known for its nurturing of liberal and pacifist beliefs, where she studied the arts and international relations. Rachel, already civic minded, however, decided that she should do more then just for herself beyond the basic requirements of academia, something most young adults in our nations universities would ever consider.

Rachel decided to join a local group called the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace and participated in various activities to promote peace initiatives and environmental causes. By her senior year, she had joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Corrie then took a leave of absence from College at the start of 2003 to initiate a sister city (or Friendship Town) project between her hometown of Olympia and the town Rafah in the Gaza Strip for the purpose of mutual cultural exchange and to participate in ISM-organized demonstrations in Rafah. Upon arriving in Israeli occupied Palestine, Rachel began training in non-violent resistance or as it is more commonly referred to in the United States ‘acts of civil disobedience.’ This time honored tradition has been part of the back bone of modern democratic societies since the American Revolution. In the U.S. one of the most noteworthy acts of civil disobedience could be considered the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. As Rachel would soon learn though, the alleged Israeli democracy does not necessarily respect such noble acts, most especially when it is a call for Palestinian rights and will respond with as much violence and hatred as they can muster.

As Rachel’s time in Palestine progressed she participated in a number of peaceful demonstrations that were not just exclusive to Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian lands. In February of 2003, she joined a massive global protest against the war in Iraq by burning not any other nation’s flag but her own in protest, and she helped conduct a mock trial of President Bush. She even served as a human shield to protect Palestinian drinking water wells from the acts of sabotage committed by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). “Nevertheless, no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can’t imagine it unless you see it - and even then you are always well aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and the fact, of course, that I have the option of leaving,” said Rachel in one of her email correspondences home.

As Rachel said, she had the option to leave at anytime yet she chose not to. For Rachel helping the victims of what she called an act of “genocide” by Israel on the people of Palestine was a commitment worthy of the high risk involved. “I feel like I’m witnessing the systematic destruction of a people’s ability to survive . . . Sometimes I sit down to dinner with people and I realize there is a massive military machine surrounding us, trying to kill the people I’m having dinner with,” said Rachel in a television interview, expressing her awareness of the danger that surrounded her. This was just two days prior to her death.

On March 16, 2003 Rachel joined up with several other U.S. and British citizens who also came to help and defend the oppressed. It was their intent to stand the line against the methodical destruction of Palestinian civilian homes by the IDF, an act many in the world (except the U.S.) view as a collective punishment for the actions of Palestine’s freedoms fighters, which is actually a violation of international law. The IDF moved in with troops, tanks and armored bulldozers. One of the bulldozers that Rachel was positioned in front of lurched forward in an aggressive manner and according to eye witnesses Rachel held her ground. She stared directly into the cab of the bulldozer before her, in clear line of site to the monstrous machine. One of the bulldozers had already knocked another protestor to the side and there after taunted and mocked the injured man and the rest of the group of unarmed defenders. Then the bulldozer began to move and Rachel was all that stood between the machine and the destruction of the home of a doctor, a preserver of life. As this destructive force moved forward it pushed a wave of rumble which engulfed young Rachel who was then pulled beneath the bulldozer. Then after having already run over her once the Israeli driver put the machine in reverse and ran over her again in a second and malicious act of cruelty. Her peers ran to her and tried to render her aide and comfort her, she was rushed to away for medical treatment but it was too late. The IDF’s destruction of Palestinian homes had claimed another innocent soul.

News spread of Rachel’s death across the rest of the world in rapid procession, the world at large, the people of Palestine and even Yasser Arafat came out to honor this hero for peace, but in the U.S. reports of her actions were limited, localized mostly to her home state and a mere whisper on the lips of the national news agencies. You see, Rachel had violated the discomfort clause of the unwritten rules of U.S. media. She had died in the defense of a people who are being slaughtered by one of our allies. In fact, she was murdered not just a common ally but by a nation that we had helped to found and build. Could America itself look in the mirror and take some responsibility for this horrendous act, of course not. And since the average citizen doesn’t want to face the facts that our nation could be allied with any nation that would commit such war crimes Rachel was deemed not ready for prime time.

It is quite obvious that the actions of these two women qualify for the true definition of being a feminist, if not as well a defining member of humanity. They chose their paths in life; their path did not choose them. They were conscious of the risks involved and despite that went forward with their choices anyway. Their decisions both directly and indirectly saved the lives of those who may never realize that fact or have even met either woman. Now the feminist movement is without two of its greatest role models, icons that they never knew they had, nor ever realized they lost. Tragically now, even though they gave their lives to save the lives others they couldn’t even get Laura Regan to play them in an NBC TV movie of the week. There will be no Saving PFC Lori Piestewa or One Day in March for them. For lack of a good publicist, Lori and Rachel, these two lost souls will fade into the oblivion of history despite the lives they saved and despite their selfless behavior. They shall be lost for never seeking fame or fortune or banners or cities to celebrate their name, they will be lost for not giving our society a politically correct, homogenized and reprocessed image of an American hero. For Lori it was always about her family, for Rachel it was about standing up for those who were not aloud to stand up for themselves, for the American media it was and is still about ratings and one person sacrificing her life alone in the dark where no one will ever know or see, just will never sell as well for them as rescued P.O.W. who can wave a flag.