Today, Navajo Code Talkers are considered American heroes. How did the Navajo people respond to being drafted into a country's military that they were not technically a part of?
On the whole, they responded very enthusiastically after Pearl Harbor and the US's formal entrance into WWII. As I mentioned in a previous post, enlistment rates were well into the high 90s, marking a distinct change in the US-Navajo relationship. However, the Navajo had technically been citizens since passage of the Snyder act in the 1920s. The last war for which American Indians were not full citizens was that of WWI, a rather understudied subject. Since I expanded on the feelings of the Navajo towards WWII in the linked post, I'll take this one to expand on their sentiments with regards to WWI.
As you might guess, many Navajo were confused by their legal status during the initial drafts. A common feeling among non-citizen natives was a reluctance to fight on behalf of a country that denied them rights. When considered next to the generally frigid Native-BIA relationship, it's not entirely unexpected that enrollment numbers were significantly lower than those of the WWII drafts. This idea is even less surprising in light of the fact that the draft process for non-citizen natives could at best be described as 'confused'. The legal and ethnic status for non-citizens was rather unclear for the first year of the war. As recorded by Britten,^1 natives were used to fill quotas in white regiments to maintain segregation from black regiments.
What may be surprising is how high draft numbers actually were. A BIA hearing before the House Committee on Military Affairs estimated nearly 20% of American Indian Men were enlisted and able to serve. At the same time, Dr. Joseph Dixon made a protracted argument before the House committee^2 that segregated Native-only regiments were an excellent idea, although the Army Chief of Staff opposed the idea on the grounds of insufficient men.
The entire process of draft for Natives was complex due to their questionable legal status. In addition to the question of racial identity, it was unclear what entity was most appropriate for administering the draft boards and whether drafted soldiers could be enfranchised. In practice, Indians were given special administration under the BIA, who largely left the question of rights to local agents. The legal mess this created lasted until June 1918, when BIA commissioner C. Sells established guidelines for the eligibility of natives for citizenship.
^1 Britten, Thomas A. American Indians in World War I: at home and at war. UNM Press, 1997.