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Lori Piestewa was the first American servicewoman to die in Iraq.

She was twenty-three and the mother of a three year old daughter, Carla, and a five year old son, Brandon, when her Army maintenance unit was ambused near Nasiriya. Her body was found several days later, in a shallow grave. Lori was a Hopi, and after her divorce, lived with her parents on the Hopi reservation in Arizona. She joined the army to better herself.

My compatriot, the Farmer, pointed me to this moving story about an multi-nation commerative service to honor Lori Piestewa, held on the Big Cypress Seminole reservation last Friday.

Florida's Seminole community closed a protective circle around one of its own Thursday, honoring Lori Piestewa, the first American servicewoman killed in the Iraq war.

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On a cord around her neck, Percy Piestewa, Lori's mother, wears a talisman, a laminated snapshot of the two smiling young women.

The photo was taken in February, when their company shipped out for Iraq. A month later Piestewa was dead, and Lynch was taken prisoner by Iraqi troops.

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Sonny Nequaya, a Comanche, traveled with several family members from Apache, Okla., to chant, drum and dance at the ceremony. Dressed in feathered hats, beaded garments and moccasins, the Comanches' voices echoed through a large open-air auditorium on the reservation where several hundred Seminoles, Comanche, Navaho and other Native American tribe members fanned themselves in the still heat.

Read the rest. Native-Americans understand that ceremony matters.