One year ago, on a day much like today, United States Army and Marine Corps veteran J.R. Quintero knelt in the middle of the field at the American Legion Fairgrounds in Jacksonville and kissed the earth. For the entire day, the deep pulse of a drum had resonated in the background — boom-boom-boom-boom — steady, like a heartbeat. Voices chanted. Dancers danced.
Quintero was being honored at the second annual Onslow Veterans Pow Wow, and he was overwhelmed with emotion. “So when I got out to the middle of that field,” he says, “I got down on my knees and kissed the ground and talked to the Great Spirit in the Sky.”
On a riser at the edge of the field, J.D. Moore, the pow wow’s emcee, spoke gently into a microphone. “He’s giving thanks to the Great Spirit in the Sky,” Moore told the crowd watching from the bleachers, “because he’s home now.”
After returning home from the Vietnam War, where he served as an Army code talker from 1966 to 1969, J.R. Quintero felt that his sacrifices had been forgotten. That changed at the Onslow Veterans Pow Wow. photograph by Matt Ray Photography
More than half a century earlier, Quintero, a Chiricahua Apache from Arizona, had served in combat as one of a handful of Army code talkers — Native American soldiers who used their tribal languages to send messages to the battlefield without fear of being intercepted by the enemy. Code talkers had been heroes during the first and second World Wars, but Quintero didn’t serve in those conflicts. He served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969, during the height of the anti-war movement. When he arrived home after 104 missions, he didn’t get a hero’s welcome. Instead, he faced hostility as a soldier and discrimination as an Indian.
Quintero is back at the fairgrounds on this day, a year later, for the third annual pow wow, standing yards away from the spot of ground that he kissed. He’s wearing an elaborate bead-and-bone choker around his neck and a ball cap featuring the words “Vietnam Veteran” stitched in gold. Leaning against a hand-carved wooden walking stick, he pauses and looks down at the dirt. Under a deep blue sky streaked with white clouds, the former code talker still gets a little choked up remembering that moment on the field.
“And then, J.D., he says to me, ‘Welcome home.’” Quintero shakes his head, his lips pressed firmly together. “Well, I was crying and everything, because that’s what I’d been waiting for.”
The pow wow brings together tribes from around the country to share their music, dance, and food, as well as to honor veterans. During the Veterans Honor Song, service members of all backgrounds — including Quintero (second from right) — enter the arena together. photograph by Matt Ray Photography
The respect that Quintero received that day is exactly what retired Marine Sgt. Maj. Raquel Painter wants every Native American veteran to get. Appreciation. A sense of belonging. A strong tie to their culture. It’s why she founded the Onslow Veterans Pow Wow in 2021. When Painter was stationed at Camp Lejeune between deployments from 2006 to 2016, there were no pow wows here where she could find fellowship with other Native Americans, seek spiritual guidance, participate in ancient rituals. She was far away from her Santee Sioux roots in Iowa, where she grew up.
“When I was serving,” Painter says, “if you couldn’t make it home for celebrations, whether because of duty commitments, finances, or whatever, you went without because there was nothing around. So it was important for me to establish this here, because this is the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast, and an hour and a half away, you have the largest Army base, and then an hour down the road is an Air Force base. Jacksonville was just a prime location for us to do this.”
• • •
Boom-boom-boom-boom. Short, staccato; constant, unchanging. Boom-boom-boom-boom. The life-giving pulse of Mother Earth. Boom-boom-boom-boom. In the breeze, in the dirt, in the water; in the circle on the field; in the bleachers, where men and women watch under the heat of the sun, bedecked in a kaleidoscope of colors. Boom-boom-boom-boom. Headdresses, hair ties, quillwork, beads, breastplates, shawls, jingle dresses, moccasins. Boom-boom-boom-boom.
“The drum is the heartbeat of the pow wow,” Painter says, sitting next to a tipi with her sister Rochelle Selby. The two are practically inseparable, having grown up as the youngest of seven children. “I was gonna be the baby,” Painter says, “and then she popped out five years later. For the longest time, my dad called her Babe — that was her name! Like, I didn’t know her name was Rochelle.”
Selby laughs. “I didn’t know my name was Rochelle!”
Before founding the Onslow Veterans Pow Wow, retired Marine Sgt. Maj. Raquel Painter (right) spent 26 years serving in the military. Her sister Rochelle Selby followed her from base to base around the country. Both eventually settled in Jacksonville. photograph by Matt Ray Photography
Though not a veteran herself, Selby has followed her sister from base to base over the years. When Painter was stationed at Camp Pendleton, her sister moved to California and attended high school there. When Painter was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, Selby moved her family there, too. Now, Selby, their mother, and several cousins live in Jacksonville. “Well, it’s home,” Painter says. “Like I tell everybody, I’ve been to a lot of places in the U.S. and overseas, and Onslow County is really, really dedicated to veterans. They made it welcoming and made me want to keep my family here and bring my extended family here.”
Painter always wanted to be a Marine. She was in second grade when a military officer, the father of a classmate, came to talk to the students on career day. “He walked into the classroom,” Painter says, “and he had his dress blues on, and he was looking sharp, and the class just got totally quiet. It was at that point, when I was watching him speak …” She pauses and glances away, deep in thought. “I was like, ‘That’s what I want to be.’”
She began reading books about the Battle of the Bulge and the Pacific War; she followed military stories in the news; she watched movies like Full Metal Jacket. When she was 17, she invited a recruiter to the house. It took three return visits before her mother could convince her father to sign the papers. And then, in 1989, she was off.
During her time in Afghanistan, Painter led female engagement teams (FETs) to reach out to local women. In 2010, Painter — then a first sergeant with the U.S. Marine Corps — gave candy to an Afghan girl while the child’s mother received medical attention. photograph by Matt Ray Photography
During her military career, Painter traveled the world. In 2004, she went to the Far East on a humanitarian mission in the wake of the Indian Ocean earthquake that caused a tsunami to hit and impact more than a dozen countries. She arrived at Camp Lejeune in 2006, and within a year shipped out to Iraq, where she ran a company, and Afghanistan, where she led female engagement teams (FETs) responsible for reaching out to Afghan women.
“Our military men couldn’t engage with half the population,” Painter says, “so the FETs went in and got to know the women and found out what was going on with them. To me, that really changed the direction of the Marine Corps.”
After 26 years of service, Painter retired from the Corps in 2016, but she didn’t slow down. Nowadays, she works tirelessly as a community advocate. She serves as president of United Way of Onslow County, as a member of the Onslow Civic Affairs Committee, and as chairperson of the Onslow Strong Disaster Recovery Alliance, a group that she cofounded following the destruction wrought by Hurricane Florence. She advocates for formerly incarcerated people, abused children, and, of course, military veterans.
The Onslow Veterans Pow Wow is something she’d long wanted to launch, and since doing so, she’s been recognized numerous times. In 2021, she was named Onslow County’s Woman of the Year and Outstanding Combat Female Veteran of North Carolina; in 2023, she was nominated for the Onslow County NAACP Branch Woman of the Year; and this year, she received the League of Women Voters’ Military Service Award.
“For me, it’s all about serving, you know?” Painter says. “And I’m retired now, so I do [the pow wow] because it’s what I want to do to serve my community. It’s important to me.” She lets out a hearty laugh. “This is my baby!”
• • •
Boom-boom-boom-boom. The drums continue on Sunday, the second day of the pow wow. Boom-boom-boom-boom. Everyone rejuvenated after a night of rest, including a twilight sweat lodge ceremony in which a handful of Native American attendees gathered to connect with the Creator. Boom-boom-boom-boom. More dancing, more chanting; more headdresses, quillwork, beads, breastplates, shawls, jingle dresses, moccasins. Boom-boom-boom-boom.
The idea that the hundreds of Native American men and women who are gathered here today gave years of service to the U.S. military may seem, to some, a cruel irony. After all, it was American military forces that rounded up Native Americans in the early years of our country and confined them to reservations.
And yet, American Indians serve in the U.S. Armed Forces at five times the national average. They’re the military’s largest ethnic group, per capita. They’ve served in every major war effort from the Revolutionary War to the present. During the Civil War, a member of the Seneca Nation, Ely S. Parker, was military secretary under Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Parker even wrote the final draft of the Confederate terms of surrender. In 1869, he was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
The Onslow Veterans Pow Wow honors service members from all branches of the military. photograph by Matt Ray Photography
But why? It’s not an unreasonable question. And Painter is quick with an answer. “You know, what it really is for us is this: The land is land,” she says. “We’re fighting for the land that we live on. We’re fighting for our families that live on it. The ownership of land is something that Native Americans don’t believe in. It’s hard to own something that’s always going to be here — something that’s going to be here when you’re not. Ownership of land is a different concept that we’re still trying to get used to. But either way, we’re going to fight for our families, our traditions, our culture — and the land that we live on.”
J.R. Quintero was one of 42,000 Native American soldiers in Vietnam. He had no idea what he was getting himself into when he enlisted in the Army at 17 years old, but he didn’t have anything to lose. “When I came off that reservation,” Quintero says, “I had nothing.”
Nothing but his cultural traditions. Which turns out to have been a lot. In addition to utilizing his native language as a code talker, Quintero helped his fellow soldiers survive in the wilderness. During one mission, the young sergeant and his team were stranded for eight days on the side of a mountain.
“We ran out of food — I showed them how to live off the land,” he says. “It was dry — we took the dew off the leaves of the plants and trees and got as much water as we could.” Quintero promised his men that they would get out alive. “I told them, ‘Y’all gonna go home,’” he says. “And they did. They all went home.” He laughs. “I had a couple of men panic and say to me, ‘I’m gonna die out here!’ I wanted to slap ’em. I said, ‘No you’re not. Did I not tell you that you’re going home?’ I said, ‘But first, we got to get out of this valley.’”
For J.R. Quintero, the Onslow Veterans Pow Wow provided a sense of respect and appreciation that he’d been seeking since he served in the Vietnam War. photograph by Matt Ray Photography
Once the team returned to safety, a colonel friend approached Quintero. “He says to me, ‘What did you eat?’ I said, ‘We had tree roots; I knew what plants we could deal with.’” Quintero smiles. “I was very proud,” he says. “I kept my word.” A thank-you was all he ever wanted in return, but he felt neglected. “You don’t forget your people, your culture, everything that we’d been through,” he says. “I was feeling like I did something good for people and they just turned their back on me. That’s what it felt like.”
In 2022, in the middle of the circle at the Onslow Veterans Pow Wow, Quintero finally got what he was looking for. He looks down at the earth, pokes his walking stick into the grass, and twists it around. “I’d been waiting and waiting and waiting for my welcome home,” he says. His smile turns to a grin. “And that was the welcome home that I needed. It was 53 years late, but I got it.”
Boom-boom-boom-boom. And the drumbeat continues.
Onslow Veterans Pow Wow
November 2-3, 2024
American Legion Fairgrounds
146 Broadhurst Road
Jacksonville, NC 28540
(910) 478-6597
onslowpowwow.org
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