He was given a place that the country reserves for those it has decided to honor.

There is a particular complexity to this.

The country that buried Ira Hayes at Arlington was the same country whose federal policies had stripped the Akimel O’odham of their river water and left his community in poverty.

The military that gave him full honors was the same institution that had pulled him off Iwo Jima and sent him on a bond tour he didn’t want.

The ceremony was dignified and genuine in its way, but it was also, at least in part, a continuation of the same process by which the country had used Ira Hayes as a symbol without fully reckoning with what his life had actually contained.