Badass Native / Real Life

• Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Tecumseh, Pontiac, Manuelito, Roman Nose... Take your pick, honestly.
• Just about anybody in AIM (American Indian Movement).
• In the 30s, Josef Goebbels, possibly motivated by Karl May novels, declared the Sioux to be Aryans. Pure Aryans, in fact (the Japanese were also thought to be a "Honorary Aryan people due to their bravery"). The Sioux response was to join the U.S. military, where they could hopefully kill Nazis.
• Navajo Code Talkers played a major role in the defeat of the Japanese in World War II. Very few people outside the Navajo Nation (and none in Japan) understood the language, which was used as the basis for a code.^note Contrary to popular belief, the language itself was not the code; Navajos who were not Code Talkers were just as incapable of translating it as the Japanese. Other tribes, such as the Choctaw, contributed Code Talkers as well, but the Navajo were the most numerous and famous.
• Indigenous people join the military much more frequently than the majority culture.
  My People have fought for this land / Here and across the sea
  Their shadows cast on sacred ground / For all eternity.
• The number of Native Americans who volunteered (they were not eligible for the draft) for duty in WWI comprised about 10000, out of a total population less than 300,000. The number of recruits doubled by WWII.
• Lt. Commander Ernest E. Evans, Commanding Officer of USS Johnston (DD-557). Half Cherokee and a quarter Creek, he vowed upon taking command of his ship that he would never run from the enemy. He fulfilled that vow on Oct 25, 1944, when his task force, Taffy 3, found itself up against a fleet of Japanese battleships, led by none other than the Yamato (the largest, most heavily-armed battleship ever built), with nothing larger than an escort carrier. He ordered Johnston to turn and charge the enemy line, managing to get close enough for a torpedo attack which blew the bow off a Japanese cruiser, causing another to stop and lend assistance, thereby taking both of them out of the fight. The little tin can took a savage beating afterward (helped by the fact that it was too small for effective use of the Yamato's massive guns, as they were designed to pierce battleship armor before exploding; against an unarmored destroyer they passed through one side of the hull and out the other without setting off the fuse), but Evans stayed in command right up to the very end, eventually going down with the ship. He received the Medal of Honor.
• Hongi Heka and Te Rauparaha of New Zealand, Māori chieftains in the early 19th century who were heavily involved in the Musket wars. Hongi Heka pioneered the use of muskets in Māori warfare, leading to the situation where the Māori, those who survived, were well prepared to take on the British in this matter. Hongi Heka also, in between fighting wars, found time to contribute to writing the first Māori-English dictionary. Te Rauparaha was called the Napoleon of New Zealand because of the large amount of land he conquered, and he was composer of "Ka Mate", quite possibly the most well-known haka worldwide.
  • The British and New Zealand settlers had a real tough time trying to take away Māori lands because of the experience of the Musket Wars, which not only prepared the Māori for modern warfare (all the more amazing because just forty years earlier they were a Stone Age society), but with that also came some inspired innovations, like the modification of the traditional pa (fortified village) that came with trenches and bunkers. Gate Pa was famous because the British shelled the crap out of the place, but inflicted virtually no casualties on the bunkered Māori, so when the British marched in thinking they'd obliterated them, the defenders just burst out of their trap doors and gunned them down.
• Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu, who was the first Māori to win a Victoria Cross (sadly posthumous), in WWII. To quote: "On 26/27 March 1943 during the action at Tobaga Gap, Tunisia, Second Lieutenant Ngarimu, who was commanding a platoon in a vital hill feature strongly held by the enemy, led his men straight up the face of the hill and was first on the crest. He personally destroyed two machine-gun posts and owing to his inspired leadership several counter-attacks were beaten off during the night. He was twice wounded but refused to leave his men. By morning when only two of his platoon remained unwounded, reinforcements arrived. When the next counter-attack was launched, however, Second Lieutenant Ngarimu was killed."
• Joe Medicine Crow (Crow) was the last Indian to become a war-chief — he did so in WWII. There are four things one must do to gain the status (including counting coup, disarming the enemy, leading a successful war party, and taking horses from the enemy) and he did all of them.
• Spc. Lori Piestewa (Hopi), the first Native American woman to be killed in combat overseas. When the Pentagon presented us with a Rambo-like fantasy built around the capture and (partly staged according to the BBC) rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, Lynch herself went before the House Committee on Oversight to reveal that not only was much of the story false, but that Piestewa was the real hero. Driving in the same convoy as Lynch, she had picked her up when her vehicle broke down in the middle of an ambush. She drove through a hail of gunfire, crashed into a tractor-trailer and was subsequently shot in the head. Truly a Native Badass.
• Several Mapuche chieftains during the War of Arauco were this, but special mentions go to Lautaro (Valdivia's ex-aid, who escaped from captivity and then became the leader of the Mapuche via teaching them how to fight the Conquistadores), Caupolicán (doubling as World's Strongest Man according to his myth, and ultimately Impaled with Extreme Prejudice) and Galvarino (Hot-Blooded Handicapped Badass).
• Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who fought in the Battle of the Rosebud (or The Fight Where the Girl Saved Her Brother, as it is called by the Cheyenne, named after she rode back on her horse to save him after other retreated), fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn, and was credited with knocking Custer off his horse during Custer's Last Stand by the Cheyenne tribe. There have even been some claims it was her who had killed Custer, though they're unconfirmed. More reliably, a female Sioux warrior, Moving Robe Woman, is credited with stabbing Custer fatally after he had fallen while a male Sioux warrior, Fast Eagle, held him down. They would also be examples of this.
• Benito Juarez was a Mexican Zapotec who acted as President of Mexico in the 1860s during the French Intervention, heading the republican Government in Exile and La Résistance against Puppet King Maximillian Hapsburg and his French backers. Under his leadership, the Mexican republicans held out long enough for the US to win the American Civil War and start applying pressure on the French to withdraw, even as the French public itself became increasingly frustrated at the costs of the war.
• Arariboia (whose name means "Ferocious Snake") was the Temiminó chieftain, reputed to being able to swim at long distances without tiring and achieved a decisive victory against French colonists who were allied with a rival tribe. Though he was rewarded by the Portuguese with knighthood, he was unhappy of serving them that he told them off... and got away with it. He went on to found the city of Niterói, being the only native founder of a city in Brazil.
• Francis Pegahmagabow, a Canadian First Nations soldier recognized as the most effective sniper of WWI as well as a highly skilled scout. He joined up at the beginning of the war and proceeded to fight in some of the bloodiest campaigns, notably the Battle of the Scarpe where he braved no man's land in order to scavenge ammo for his comrades, and managed to survive all the way to the end, racking up a total of 378 credited kills. He ended up the most decorated indigenous Canadian soldier in history, earning himself six medals and a song by Sabaton.
• The same can be said about indigenous Soviet snipers during WWII. Case in point: Semyon "Taiga Shaman" Nomokonov (Hamnigan Evenk), Ivan "Die sibirische Mitternacht" Kulbertinov (Evenk), Fyodor "Sergant-never-miss" Okhlopkov (Yakut), and a bunch of others.