As I was gathering information for the Northern Minnesota Veterans Home Task Force, I discovered some interesting facts about American Indian service members. First, they serve at a higher rate and have a higher concentration of female servicemembers than all other servicemembers.

As a group, they are younger than others who serve, and they serve in the Navy more than any other branch of service.

Up here in northern Minnesota we have four counties that have significant American Indian veteran populations. These counties are Beltrami with 329 American Indian veterans, Cass with 254, Clearwater with 52, and Mahnomen with 107 (this is 24 percent of all county veterans). Overall, 8.7 percent of the veterans in these four counties are American Indian. Compared to the State average (.9 percent) and the national average (.7 percent), these four counties represent a highly concentrated number of American Indian veterans in both Minnesota and the United States.

In Minnesota, there are approximately 3,471 American Indian veterans. In northern Minnesota, there are 1,141 American Indian veterans representing 33 percent of all American Indian veterans in the state.