KALISPELL — The Library of Congress Veterans History Project travels the country interviewing veterans and creating a public research archive that collects, preserves and makes their stories accessible.
The project recently traveled to Kalispell, where veterans from several branches of service shared their stories.
"Our generation, the Vietnam veterans, we are dying off. I mean, there's approximately 2,000 Vietnam veterans that pass away every day — not including the 58,000 that were killed in action,” Vietnam veteran John Wise said
Wise is a U.S. Air Force veteran who served overseas during the Vietnam War.
Wise is Native American and is descended from the Pawnee and Ute tribes.
"This country is our country, too. So I take pride in the fact that I am of Native American heritage and that I was able to serve my country," Wise said.
The Library of Congress traveled to Montana to hear more stories from Native American veterans.
Veterans History Project liaison specialist Andrew Hubert said Native American voices are underrepresented in the archives.
"It was a few years ago when we realized that out of the over 100,000 collections in the veteran's history project archives, only a few hundred were from Native American veterans, and Native American veterans serve at a rate higher than almost any other ethnic group," Hubert said.
Once interviewed, veterans’ stories are uploaded to the Library of Congress public research archive.
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Hubert said the stories create a database of knowledge for future generations.
"Yeah, we've got over 50,000 World War II stories, over 20,000 Vietnam stories, but we're always looking for more because every veteran's story is unique," Hubert said.
Blake Thompson is a U.S. Army veteran who served overseas on five deployments in the Middle East.
Thompson said it is not always easy to share stories from his service, but he was thankful for the opportunity.
"We can't expect anybody to empathize or understand what we've been through, unless we're willing to step forward and kind of share our story and provide some perspective," Thompson said.
More information on the Veterans History Project is available here.
