By James Turtle and Leonard Buffalo | North of Polite | Indigenous Veterans Day, November 8, 2026

In June 1942, Mary Greyeyes put on her Canadian Women’s Army Corps uniform and knelt for a photograph. Standing beside her was Harry Ball of Piapot First Nation. The scene was arranged for publicity. Greyeyes had been offered lunch and a new uniform. Ball was paid $20. The photograph travelled around the world. What you couldn’t tell by looking at it was that Greyeyes was just beginning her military service, and the man standing beside her had already served in the First World War.

There are two stories of service in that photograph. Greyeyes, from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, became the first Indigenous woman to join Canada’s armed forces. Ball had a record of his own. Both deserve to be remembered by name. That brings us to a question worth asking on November 8. If Canadians serve together, why do we need a separate day to remember some of them?

What November 8 is for

In the Army, Navy and Air Force, Canadians serve under the same flag. They learn to rely on the people beside them. For many, the word veteran speaks to that shared experience. A Métis veteran can take pride in being Métis and in having served Canada. How much of that identity a veteran wants to bring to a ceremony is their choice. The rest of us owe them the same respect either way.

Indigenous Veterans Day was first recognized in Winnipeg in 1994 after Indigenous veterans went unrecognized in Remembrance Day activities. The people who made room for November 8 were responding to a gap in the country’s shared remembrance. Their veterans had served alongside everyone else. Their communities wanted that service publicly remembered.

The concern about division deserves an honest answer. If November 8 becomes the only day a town tells the stories of its First Nations, Inuit and Métis veterans, the town has missed the point. Those names belong in the November 11 ceremony, in the school assembly and in the history the whole community learns. A day that grew out of exclusion should make our shared remembrance fuller.

The people behind the names

John Shiwak was an Inuk from near Rigolet, Labrador. He grew up hunting in a place where ammunition was scarce and learned to make each shot count. He carried that skill into the First World War with the Newfoundland Regiment. Newfoundland had yet to join Canada, and Shiwak’s story belongs to Labrador Inuit history as much as it belongs to the history of the war. He was killed in France in 1917.

In the Second World War, Charles “Checker” Tomkins, a Métis soldier from Grouard, Alberta, helped protect military communications by translating sensitive messages into Cree. Another Cree speaker could translate them back into English at the other end. His family learned about his wartime work as a code talker only shortly before he died in 2003. For decades, even the people closest to him had only part of the story.

What happened when they came home

The gap went beyond ceremonies. Howard Anderson, a Second World War veteran from Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, spent years pressing Ottawa for redress for First Nations veterans and their spouses. That advocacy led to a federal compensation offer in 2002. Métis veterans and their advocates pursued recognition through a separate effort. In 2019, Ottawa formally acknowledged their experiences and committed $30 million to recognition payments and commemoration. By then, nearly three-quarters of a century had passed since the Second World War ended.

A veteran could come home with a record of service and spend decades asking the country to understand what happened after the uniform came off. Remembering that history is part of taking their service seriously. The same is true of listening to veterans today when they tell us what service meant to them, in their own words.

On November 8, we remember the history that was too often left out. On November 11, when we say all who served, every one of those veterans should hear themselves included.

Lest we forget.

Sources · Canadian War Museum on Mary Greyeyes and Harry Ball · Origins of Indigenous Veterans Day · John Shiwak · Indigenous veterans and Cree code talkers · Charles Tomkins and his family · Howard Anderson · Métis Veteran Recognition Payment

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