Stolen Valor? Drum man was not a Vietnam vet.

Leave a CommentStolen Valor? Drum man was not a Vietnam vet.Food for Thought, Way of Life

The MSM is calling Nathan Philips (alsoalso called Nathaniel Alan Phillips and, Nathaniel Richard Stanard) a ‘Vietnam War Hero” but his record says otherwise. I never served so I am not prepared to criticize this man for anything other than possibly embellishing his role in the Marines. But I will offer my opinion that every liar disrespects a genuine hero, and the values of the Corps.

Nathaniel Phillips enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves on May 20th, 1972 and served until May 5th, 1976. He went AWOL three times while he was stationed at El Toro Marine Base in Southern California, according to his DD-214 form. This Stolen Valor investigator, Don Shipley, has done some research.

Nathan Philips is relatively famous. The New York Times identified Phillips as a former Director of the Native Youth Alliance, a group that works to ensure that traditional culture and spiritual ways are upheld for future generations of Native Americans, and that he leads an annual ceremony honoring Native American war veterans in Arlington National Cemetery.The Guardian called him “a well-known Native American activist who was among those leading the Standing Rock protests in 2016 and 2017 against the construction of an oil pipeline in North Dakota”.

Phillips was in the news in Michigan in 2015 when a group of students from Eastern Michigan University allegedly harassed him.[14]

In a January 2019 article in Indian Country Today‘, Phillips was described as a “keeper of a sacred pipe”.  Another January 2019 article in the Washington Post described Phillips as a “a veteran in the indigenous rights movement”.

Phillips is the subject of the award-winning 2013 documentary film Between Earth and Sky in which he and his wife, Shoshana, travel back to his Omaha reservation after his wife was diagnosed with bone-marrow cancer. She passed away of the disease in 2014.