The U.S. Department of Defense drastically reduced the number of recognized religions it observes from roughly 211 to just 31, following a memorandum issued by the Under Secretary of War, Elbridge A. Colby, and signed by Anthony Tata on May 20.
Native American religion, a term used to classify traditional Indigenous faiths, was among the 180 recognized faiths removed from a list of codes used by the Department of Defense. Religious Affiliation Codes are used in the creation of “dog tags” worn by active duty members as well as given to military chaplains to aid them in providing religious support needs. Aside from dog tags, religious information is used in the creation of headstones for service members.
The removal of a distinct code for Native American faiths does not mean Native religious practices will no longer be protected or recognized, it just means there is no separate distinct category to select, grouping them instead with all “other” category religions.
It’s unclear if this move is a violation of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act as the religion itself will still technically be recognized through the “other” category, just not in the form of a distinct, separate category. What could happen is a potential impact to the availability of tailored religion-specific resources from chaplains, though that aspect is also uncertain at this point.
The removal of a distinct Native American religious code falls in stark contrast to the overwhelming number of American Indian and Alaska Native service members, who serve at five times the national average and have served in every major conflict for over 200 years.
The distinctions removal also means that Native Americans are once again placed in the “other” category, said Frances Dupris, a Sicangu Lakota/Northern Arapaho veteran who served 24 years in the Air Force. Dupris was a United States Air Force Master Sargent.
The removal of Native American Religion from the list of codes given to chaplains does not necessarily mean that Native American religious practices will not be observed by the military. When asked for comment, a Department of Defense Spokesperson directed ICT to a statement published on the Department’s X account detailing the changes.
“Service members will not be limited to the list of ‘Religious Affiliations Codes’ when selecting information to place on their identification tags, i.e. ‘dog tags’,” the statement reads.
The Department of Defense did not respond to ICT’s request for comment on whether or not this will impact hair cutting exemptions for Indigenous veterans or the ability to wear sacred items such as eagle feathers.
The new, trimmed down list, features 21 different sects of Christianity each input as a distinct, individual code. The other ten codes are limited to: Agnostic, Baha’i faith, Buddhism, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Hindu, Islam (Muslim), Judaism (Jewish), No Religion, Other Religion and Sikh.
“Why not reduce it further?” Dupris asked. “Why not just say ‘This individual has a religious preference.’ Why pick and choose only these faiths?”
The drastic reduction of recognized faith follows what critics have called a push toward a military-wide acceptance of Christian theology.
The Department of War says the move was not intended to demean or question the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief, it’s simply to streamline the military chaplain process. However, Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has previously criticized the Biden Administration’s diversification of religious identities and expressed a desire to reverse several changes.
“Our Chaplain Core was infected by political correctness,” said Hegseth in a March 24 video on X (formerly Twitter). “The previous system had ballooned to well over 200 faith codes. … It was impractical and unusable, and many codes were never used at all.”
Visibility has a direct impact on the retention of Indigenous service members, Dupris said.
Dupris previously worked with a team of Air Force members to create support systems for Indigenous service members such as the Department of the Air Force Barrier Analysis Working Groups, the Space Force Indigenous Nations Equality Team and Joint Indigenous Collaborations Team.
“It’s important to remove barriers within the service for our members and also support recruitment and retention,” Dupris said. “All too often in my career I saw Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and Indigenous Groups be not fully understood and weren’t retained (as a result).”
For many Indigenous people, including Dupris, joining in the armed forces means following in the footsteps of their ancestors. Dupris said numerous relatives of hers including her grandparents, uncle, cousins and aunties all served in the military in different capacities.
“We would visit the Black Hills National Cemetery with my grandmother and I would see my grandparents’ graves that served in the Korean War, the Vietnam War and so forth,” Dupris said. “So it’s inherently in us to serve… All of these individuals that were my guardians in my life, that I have respect for, they prompted me to join the military.”
For generations Native people have been crucial to the success of the United States military, another aspect recently erased. Information detailing the crucial role Indigenous language speakers like the Navajo Code Talkers played in World War II was temporarily erased from the Pentagon’s website in 2025 alongside thousands of pages detailing the contributions of women and minorities to the military.
