Veterans Day: Looking after those who look after us

Only moments after the Veterans of Foreign Wars Taku Post observance ceremony ended in Centennial Hall on Friday morning, another Veterans Day event began a couple hundred yards away.

Just before noon, several hundred people, several of whom also attended the VFW ceremony, gathered in Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall to honor the nation’s veterans with “an Alaskan spin,” as Sasha Soboleff, grand president of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, put it.

“To each of you who stood there and took the oath to defend the United States of America and everything that that means it’s as good as saying to your clan’s people, your tribal people ‘I will fight and die for our beliefs,’” Soboleff said.

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For this reason, Soboleff and other speakers, including Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, talked about the importance of making sure veterans are taken care of when they return home.

The Alaska Native Veterans Ceremony echoed several of the same points that District 17 Coast Guard Commander Michael McAllister raised during a speech at the VFW event earlier that day.

Above all else, Veterans Day is an “opportunity to celebrate” the men and women of the U.S. military and the choice they made to serve their country. He discussed the need for veterans to tell their stories and make their voices heard.

Mallott’s speech in Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall felt somewhat familiar, as he too touched heavily on both of these points — but he did so with Soboleff’s “Alaskan spin.”

“When we honor our veterans, it must be a celebration, even though often times it takes on a somber tone for good reason,” Mallott said.

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He talked about the importance of making sure Alaska Native voices, especially those of veterans, are heard in all levels of government in the coming years. That is critically important, he said, if Alaska Native veterans are to be given the care that they deserve.

“Our voice must be heard, and we must bend every effort to make sure that it is heard and that it is heard in a powerful way,” he said.

For many veterans returning home from war, the fight is not over. They often struggle with depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, homelessness and other problems, Sasha Soboleff’s brother Ross said. It is for these reasons, that Mallott urged the leadership of the Alaska Native community to make sure their veterans have access to proper health care and housing.

Jackie Martin, an executive officer of the Alaska Native Sisterhood in Kake, knows how important it is to provide veterans with the care they need upon returning home from war. Four of her cousins fought in the Vietnam war.

“We were all close, as cousins will be,” Martin recalled during a brief speech at the Alaska Native Veteran Ceremony Friday.

Though all of her cousins made it home from the war, they struggled to readjust to life stateside. After returning home from Southeast Asia, one of Martin’s cousins came to her house to visit. Construction crews were building a road nearby and using dynamite. One detonation sent Martin’s cousin scrambling under her kitchen table.

“He was immediately taken back to Vietnam,” she said, explaining his battle with PTSD, a battle he and Martin’s other cousins all eventually lost. “They all committed suicide, all four of them. They made it back from Vietnam, but they couldn’t make it back home to be among us.”

Martin, Mallott, and both of the Soboleffs all assured the roughly 30 veterans in the room that community members will support them any way it can; it is the debt they owe their warriors.

“Stand proud,” Sasha Soboleff told the vets in the room. “Stand with your eyes forward and looking up because we have your back. That’s our job because you gave so much.”

• Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.