And the connection to the Navajo Nation — to family, to community, to the land and the language and the ceremonies of Diné life — appears as a through-line across virtually every recorded voice.

The Code Talkers were Marines and American veterans, but they were also and always Diné men, from specific families in specific communities on the Navajo Nation, and the deepest context of their service was not the Marine Corps but the people they had come from and returned to.

The Story That Remains To Be Told

The Navajo Code Talker story, as it has been told in American popular culture, is remarkable.

It is also incomplete in ways that become visible when you look carefully at what the simplified version leaves out or gets wrong.

It leaves out the other Native code talker programs — the Choctaw soldiers of World War I, the Comanche Code Talkers who served in Europe in World War II, the Meskwaki speakers and others — whose service is equally deserving of attention and who have received a fraction of the public recognition the Navajo program has generated.