Lori Piestewa

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Born in Tuba City, Arizona, in 1980, Lori Piestewa was the daughter of a Hopi Native American father and a Mexican-American mother. Her family had a long tradition of military service with her grandfather serving in Europe with the Army during World War II, and her father serving in the Vietnam War. Tuba City is located on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Coconino County, Arizona.

Hopi culture was important to Piestewa and her family. Her father was a regular participant in the Hopi Powamu Bean Dance Ceremony, and his exhaustion from the many traditional dances almost prevented him from going with her mother to see her off at Fort Bliss in Texas the day before she deployed to Iraq with the 50th Maintenance Company of the U.S. Army.

On March 23, 2003, Private Piestewa was with fellow soldiers Shoshana Johnson and Jessica Lynch when their convoy was ambushed near Nasiriyah, Iraq. Lynch, Johnson, and others from their unit were taken prisoner. Piestewa, along with nine other soldiers, was killed in action. She became the first American Indian woman killed in combat on foreign soil and was posthumously promoted to Specialist Piestewa. 

Since her death, Lori Piestewa's parents have come to serve as ambassadors for Hopi culture at events honoring their dauther's sacrifice around the country. Piestewa has been memorialized with a white bur oak tree at White Sands Missile Range as well as the second highest mountian peak in the Phoenix Mountains. Piestewa Peak was named for Lori on April 17, 2003, a renaming of what had previously been known as "squaw" peak. Since the 1990s, members of the American Indian Movement had petitioned to have the peak renamed, but it was not until Lori Piestewa's death that the government of Arizona moved forward with the request.