Native American women from Chemawa train to work in shipyards

When the labor market opened up during World War II, more than 65,000 Native Americans worked for war industries or joined the armed forces. Historian Grace Gouveia estimates that one fifth of Native American women who were able to work took jobs off the reservations. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) helped recruit those workers and facilitated their training and placement in shipyards and other industrial worksites. About 800 Indian women joined the armed services during the war, many recruited from off-reservation boarding schools.