President Obama reaches around the headdress of Joseph Medicine Crow to place a 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck Wednesday during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Associated Press photo by Alex Brandon
'A Good Man' Receives Medal of Freedom
August 12, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — A 95-year-old Crow Indian who went into battle wearing war paint under his World War II uniform has been awarded the nation's highest civilian honor.
Wearing a traditional headdress, Joe Medicine Crow on Wednesday received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House. The award was clasped around his neck by President Barack Obama.
"Dr. Medicine Crow's life reflects not only the warrior spirit of the Crow people, but America's highest ideals," Obama said as he introduced him and called him "a good man" in the Crow language.
Medicine Crow broke tradition and briefly spoke after Obama gave him the medal, telling the president he was "highly honored" to receive it.
15 Others Also Received Medals
Other recipients this year were Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, physicist Stephen Hawking, retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and 12 other actors, athletes, activists, scientists and humanitarians.
The president met Medicine Crow during a campaign stop last year when Obama, then a U.S. senator, was adopted as an honorary member of the Crow tribe.
In 1939, Medicine Crow became the first of his tribe to receive a master's degree, in anthropology. He is the tribe's sole surviving war chief — an honor bestowed for a series of accomplishments during World War II, including hand-to-hand combat with a German soldier whose life Medicine Crow spared.
After the war, he became tribal historian for the Crow and lectured extensively on the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Medicine Crow's grandfather served as a scout for the doomed forces of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
Medicine Crow was nominated for the presidential medal by Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming.
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