Native American citizenship and sovereignty was a long-standing point of contention between the Native peoples and the U.S. government. Even up through World War I the United States government, slide 3 of October 14th’s PowerPoint presentation says, “failed to recognize Native peoples as either fully sovereign or U.S. citizens,” leaving Native Americans in a difficult-to-navigate grey area. I would imagine that the start of the United States’ involvement in the war would have put the Native peoples in an awkward position, but many decided to join the war effort while also standing their ground. For example, the Oneida and Onondaga peoples remained firm on the state of their sovereignty by separately declaring war on Germany so that they could both join the fight against Germany after having some of their own imprisoned there but also not giving the U.S. any impression that they were backing down from this stance even then. Other Native Americans also chose to volunteer or waive the draft exemption so that they could contribute to the war effort as soldiers whereas others volunteered with the Red Cross. Reasons for World War I involvement include the quest to access rights afforded to citizens and the pursual of being recognized as sovereign as well as to fulfill economic needs or due to having been conditioned to serve in the military by being exposed to boarding schools growing up. Native Americans contributed greatly to the war simply by volunteering with the Red Cross, serving in the military, or serving in the Nurse Corps as shown in slide 6 of the October 14th PowerPoint with specific examples, but they also were major in tipping the balance toward the Allied Powers with specialty tasks like code talking such as with the Choctaw code talkers. Boarding schools that Native children had been sent to sought to erase certain aspects of Native identity such as language but come World War I the survival of these languages actually gave the Allies an edge since it would have been specific to Native groups in the U.S. with no equivalent in Europe. Despite sharing something as culturally significant as language with the government to aid in the war, very little recognition was given to those who played so important a role and it further inspired advocation for Native liberties on which progress was made in the years following and led to citizenship being extended to all Native Americans.