On February 19, 1991, Brigadier General Richard Neal, briefing reporters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, stated that the US military wanted to be certain of speedy victory once it committed land forces to "Indian Country." The following day, in a little-publicized statement of protest, the National Congress of American Indians pointed out that fifteen thousand Native Americans were serving as combat troops in the Persian Gulf. Neither Neal nor any other military authority apologized for the statement. The term "Indian Country" in cases such as this is not merely an insensitive racial slur, tastelessly but offhandedly employed to refer to the enemy. It is, rather, a technical military term, like "collateral damage" or "ordnance," that appears in military training manuals and is regularly used to mean "behind enemy lines." It is often shortened to "In Country." This usage recalls the origins and development of the US military, as well as the nature of US political and social history as a colonialist project.

— An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning American History) by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz (Page 57)