Moses Brave Heart grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, where he says positive role models were hard to find. Now, he wants to be that role model and hopes a religious accommodation to grow his hair long in the tradition of his heritage as an Oglala Sioux will help him spread that message.
“The mindset is in order to be successful and have a better life, you got to move away from the reservation,” Brave Heart, a specialist in the South Dakota National Guard, told Task & Purpose. “You gotta move away from home. That’s what a lot of people do. Then where’s all the role models? It’s as simple as if you see a young native driving a nice car. I want to give younger kids that hope. Like, ‘if he could do it, I could do it, too.’”
After high school, Brave Heart knew he wanted to start a career in law enforcement and saw the military as a road to that career. But wanting to remain close to home, he decided that joining the National Guard would be the best route.
“You can get the benefits and what not, and still volunteer for deployments,” he said. “But my whole goal was to be a good role model by coming back and showing other Native Americans I could have a good life. It’s why I pushed for this accommodation.”
Brave Heart began pushing for an accommodation in October of 2022 and it was approved in May 2023. He’s spent the year since growing it out.
Under the accommodation, which has been extended to a handful of Native soldiers and Air Force airmen, Brave Heart is subject to Army female grooming standards in length and style of hair. He can also wear traditional Sioux head decorations for Army portraits, including an eagle feather.
Sioux add feathers for significant life events. Brave Heart wears one, which he received when he graduated from high school.
“I get the weird looks, and I expected looks because it’s not normal to see a male in uniform with long hair. I look at it as an opportunity to tell them about our culture,” Brave Heart said. “We view it as an extension of our spirit, is what I always tell them. The only time we would cut it off is if we lose someone close to us. It would be part of the grieving process to cut it off. And what we do with it is either to burn it or burial.”
Brave Heart said that Army grooming standards had come up when his mom’s brother passed away a few months ago, when his hair was still short — too short, he says, to even cut off ceremonially for his uncle’s passing.
When he joined the Army National Guard, in 2020, Brave Heart said, he gave little thought to hair requirements.
“I knew I wanted to go into law enforcement and the military, and at the time thought, well, I can only do that with short hair and that’s how it’s got to be,” he said.
Screen capture from South Dakota National Guard Facebook.
He spent four years with the North Dakota Army National Guard before transferring to the South Dakota Guard’s 235th Military Police Company in April.
He began to look into a religious waiver after reading about Connor Crawn, an Air Force security forces airmen who received a religious accommodation for his Mohawk Nation heritage.
“I reached out to him,” Brave Heart said. “You know, if the Air Force could do it, why not?”
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He also credits a fellow North Dakota Guardsman, Capt. Nathan Johnson, with helping him push the accommodation through.
“The thing that really pushed me was that I wanted to be in uniform and also express my culture, and long hair is significant in all Native American tribes,” Brave Heart said in a release. “So being in the Army and being told ‘Be All You Can Be,’ well this is a part of me, and Capt. Johnson was really excited and supportive to help me get this.”
When word spread of his accommodation on social media, he said, there was a predictable amount of negative comments, mostly from soldiers from past eras. One voice, though, surprised him.
“I had an uncle that was in the Marines,” Brave Heart said. “He was one of them that kind of gave me some pushback on that. He was like, ya know, ‘you should stay disciplined!’ And he was one of my role models growing up.”
But he has no regrets.
“I just turn it all into noise because I’m being strong in my beliefs and culture,” Brave Heart said.
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