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Kilma Sibimoat Lattin
Born	(1978-10-30)October 30, 1978 La Jolla, California
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	2002-2006
Rank	First Lieutenant
Unit	Delta Company 145th Aviation Regiment
Awards	Soldier's Medal for Valor
Other work	Emmy Award for "Defending the Homeland"

First Lieutenant Kilma Sibimoat Lattin (October 30, 1978) is a Native American leader, futurist, businessman, and military veteran. He has gained recognition for accomplishments across many fields, many for the benefit of Native American communities. He is a Hall of Fame inductee (San Diego Unified School District, 2014), an avid advocate of science, education, and technology. He is a member of the Pala Band of Mission Indians in San Diego, California, where he was elected to multiple terms of office on both the Executive Committee and the Tribal Council between 2006 and 2012.

During his tenure as a tribal leader Lattin was engaged in nation-building and completed several high-profile projects for his tribe, earning multiple awards and speaking engagements. Twice invited by the Native American Financial Officers Association (NAFOA), Lattin also gave Economic Development presentations at Stanford University, and lectured at California State University, San Marcos, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in the Departments of History and Communication, and for the ROTC; and most recently at the Department of Homeland Security in 2019. Lattin has also presented at the USS Midway as part of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business military transition program hosted by the USC Alumni Association.

Lattin has advocated for tribal issues at the Tribal, Local, State and Federal levels. Lattin helped draft domestic policy positions for Native Americans during the U.S. Presidential Campaign of 2012. For the 2012 Presidential campaign. Lattin worked alongside John Tahsuda, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior and a citizen of the Kiowa Tribe.

His first elected position was as the president of the associated student body, American Indian Student Association (AISA) at University of California, Santa Barbara, 2001. In 2005, at the age of 27, he was elected by his tribe as a Tribal Leader.. While serving with his tribe he was subsequently elected to the local Utility Board, overseeing local water and environmental issues. Also, while serving his tribe he was elected as a delegate and alternate delegate to the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGA), respectively. In 2018, he was elected to serve as the President of the Rotary Club of La Jolla. More recently, Lattin was elected to serve as a student senator to represent students within the San Diego Community College District at Mesa College.

In addition to community service, Lattin is an entrepreneur and investor. He continues to consult on Native American issues and projects.

Early Life and Education

Kilma Lattin was born in La Jolla, a town in San Diego, California where his family has lived for three generations Roy Anthony Lattin II was a graduate of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), a community leader, and Vice-Chairman of the Pala Indian Reservation. His mother, Elizabeth Anne Courtney, was a graduate of San Diego State University (SDSU), and attended law school at the University of San Diego (USD). Elizabeth was an artist and life-long resident of La Jolla.

As a child, Kilma Lattin split his time between the Pala Indian Reservation and La Jolla. At the age of ten, Kilma lost his father to a motor vehicle accident. After his father’s passing, Kilma lived with his mother full time in La Jolla. He attended La Jolla High School, and graduated in the class of 1996. He was a member of the football team and wrestling team.

After high school, Lattin attended UC Santa Barbara (UCSB), graduating with Bachelors Degrees in History (with honors), and Communications, in the class of 2002. While at UCSB Lattin was elected to serve as the Student Body President of the American Indian Student Association (AISA). He also played one year of rugby and earned a military commission through the Army ROTC.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Lattin felt compelled to serve his country. On September 27th, 2001, Lattin enlisted in the United States Army as an E5 Sergeant and ROTC Cadet with the Army’s Simultaneous Membership Program (SMP). After completing his military service in 2006, Lattin served three terms of elected office on the Executive Committee and Tribal Council for the Pala Indian Tribe.

While serving as a Tribal Council member for his Indian reservation he earned a Masters of Business Administration from the Marshall School of Business through the University of Southern California, with studies in Beijing, China, 2012. He attended three graduate programs through Harvard University’s, Executive Education Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The first was, “Innovations in Governance” located at the John F. Kennedy (JFK) School of Government, 2007. The second was, “Strategy and Execution” located at a remote site for the Harvard Business School, in Mumbai, India, 2013. The third was, “Finance for Senior Executives” located at the Harvard Business School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2014.

Military and Heroism

Immediately following the terrorist attacks in 2001, Lattin joined the U.S. Army as a Simultaneous Membership Program (SMP) Cadet, which began his military service as both a Non-Commissioned Officer, Sergeant, and Cadet in the Reserve Officer Training Corps. As a Sergeant, Lattin’s first station was in the 3-140th Aviation, a CH-47 Chinook Company located in Stockton, California. In 2002, Lattin earned a full commission as an Aviation Officer in the United States Army’s Air Cavalry, the 1-18th AIR CAV based out of Los Alamitos, California. In 2003, during flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama, he was ranked at the top of his class (#1 on the Order of Merit List) during Phase 1 of his Officer Basic Course (OBC). Lattin was eventually qualified to fly the OH-58 Kiowa and the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. He served in Delta Company, 1-145th Aviation Regiment at Fort Rucker, and was honorably discharged in 2006 for a service-connected knee injury. When his home unit, the 1-18th AIR CAV was defunded and disbanded as part of the US Army’s aviation restructuring initiative. Lattin was unable to continue his military service.

Family military heritage

Lattin’s family has served in the military for multiple generations. His maternal great-grandfather was a World War One (WWI) pilot. Simultaneously in WWI, his maternal grandfather, Colonel Thomas George Lanphier Sr., a graduate of the United States Military Academy at Westpoint in 1914, was also serving in WWI in the Army Air Corp stationed in France. Lanphier Sr., was one of three men to ever fly the Spirit of St. Louis during his time as the Commander of Selfridge Field, Michigan. An uncle, Colonel Thomas George Lanphier, Jr. is partially credited as having shot down the plane carrying Admiral Yamamoto, killing the mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attacks of December 7, 1941. Lattin’s paternal grandfather, Roy A. Lattin, Sr., was a Private First Class in the United States Marine Corps (USMC) and fought in the Battle of Guadalcanal.

Heroism

In April 2003 in Fort Rucker, Alabama while en route to a flight school training session, 2Lt Lattin saw a woman on the side of the road fully engulfed in flames. This was later revealed to be due to an accident with a gas mower, and in a panic the woman had run which caused the flames to spread. Lattin jumped out of his vehicle, crossed two lanes of traffic, and saved her life by pushing her to the ground and using his body and freshly-mowed grass to extinguish the flames.

During this incident, Lattin sustained 2nd-degree burns over his face, arms, and neck from the incident, but refused local ambulatory services. Later that morning, upon arriving on base, Lattin checked in to the Fort Rucker Medical Facility for care. Initially, Lattin did not disclose the event or the degree of his injuries to his superiors at flight school, as he did not want to be removed from flight duty, attributing the burns instead to a kitchen accident. Lattin was later recognized for the deed with a Distinguished Citizen Award by the City of Enterprise, Alabama. Once his superiors were made aware of the recognition from the city for his deed, he was recommended for the highest military award outside of an active combat zone. In 2003, upon graduation from flight school, Lattin was awarded the prestigious, Soldiers Medal for Valor, authorized by Congress in 1922, and approved by President George W. Bush in 2003, presented to 2LT Lattin by the Commanding General Officer of Fort Rucker, the U.S. Army’s flight school..

The Soldiers Medal is the highest honor a soldier can receive for an act of valor in a non-combat situation, held to be equal to or greater than the level which would have justified an award of the Distinguished Flying Cross had the act occurred in combat. A plaque recognizing Lattin’s service can be found on the Mt. Soledad Veteran’s Memorial at the Mount Soledad Cross in La Jolla, CA .

Native American Veterans advocacy

Lattin is actively involved in the military veteran community. He founded the Pala Veterans Organization which provides Pala veterans with a community and meeting schedule which has provided a much-needed outlet in which to share their experiences with other veterans, and subsequently conceived of and produced a documentary titled, Defending The Homeland about their service in the military which won an Emmy Award in 2013. In 2020 he wrote an op-ed piece about COVID-19 protocols in the United States Department of Defense. He is currently working on an augmented reality app honoring the contributions of Native Americans in combat throughout U.S. history and in the present day.

Leadership and Advocacy

Tribal Leadership

Upon leaving the military, Lattin returned to San Diego and became involved with tribal affairs on the Pala Reservation. He was elected three times to the Pala Executive Tribal Council, serving as Tribal Secretary from 2006-2011.. During this time, he developed and led several tribal initiatives for the benefit of the members of the Pala Tribe.

First Tribal Radio Station in Southern California

In response to an outbreak of wildfires in southern California in 2007 and a recognition of the lack of infrastructure needed to convey critical information to tribal members living near the wildfires, Lattin led an initiative to develop and secure funding for the opening of the first Native-owned and operated radio station in southern California. The FCC granted the station’s license in 2011, the first such station authorized by the FCC in southern California in twenty years. Initially, the station launched as KOPA 91.3, RezRadio. Now operating under the call sign KPRI it continues to be a commercial-free station operating on the Pala Reservation, playing a mix of music, talk radio, and cultural and language programming. Lattin held a talk show called “The Pala Nation” to help fill air during the initial programming schedules. Since its inception, RezRadio’s station manager has been John Fox, who was hired by Lattin after he recognized his name from among the applicants, having listened to him on B100 in La Jolla throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Pala Skatepark

In 2007 during his time as Tribal Secretary, Lattin and the Pala Tribal Council were petitioned by a group of young skateboarders living on the Pala Reservation for funds to improve a skate ramp that had fallen into disrepair Lattin led an effort to raise $600,000 and hired renowned skatepark architect Wally Hollyday to design and build a new 22,000-square-foot skatepark that included bowls, ramps, rails, and a kidney-shaped pool within the existing Pala Reservation sports complex. The Pala Skatepark was completed in 2008, and was featured in an exhibition on skateboarding at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. from June to September 2009, and in the museum's New York City location from March to June 2010. The exhibition, titled, "Ramp It Up: Skateboard Culture in Native America" toured across the country from 2012-2015 and featured photographs of the skatepark as well as skate decks with the Pala Tribal name and logo.

Philanthropy

Lattin has been a contributing member of Rotary International, the California Innocence Project, the USS Midway Museum, the George and Laura Bush Foundation and the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the National World War Two Museum, Las Patronas, and other charitable organizations and non-profit organizations, both locally and nationally. In 2016, Lattin led an initiative to raise money and supplies for the children affected by the chaotic and violent events surrounding the Standing Rock Protests. During state-wide school budget cuts in California from 2008-2011, Lattin worked with Pala Tribal Chairman Robert Smith and the Pala Tribal Council to secure funds to support education for tribal youth. This included an annual donation of $140,000 a year beginning in 2009 to the Vivian Banks Charter School, an elementary school on the Pala Reservation, and a $100,000 donation to help fund transportation programs in the Fallbrook Union High School District and the Bonsall Union School District to ensure that middle school and high school students would continue to receive rural bus service to their schools.

La Jolla Sunrise Rotary Club

In 2018 Lattin was elected President of the La Jolla Sunrise Rotary Club. He served as president from June 2018 to March 2019. During his tenure the club was featured multiple times in the local paper, The La Jolla Light. He worked with his members to restructure the club into Rotary’s “Six Avenues of Service.” While presiding and organizing the weekly meetings, Lattin simultaneously fulfilled the club’s long-term goals of increasing the club’s budget revenue. This was achieved through cost-cutting, renegotiating existing contracts, modernizing financial processing, as well as adding new members. Lattin was known to motivate and retain existing members. Lattin also initiated and led a plan to solve the community Christmas tree dilemma in his community of La Jolla.

Filmmaking and Augmented Reality

Defending the Homeland: Emmy Award-winning Documentary

During his time on the Pala Tribal Council, Lattin served alongside Gilbert Mojado, a fellow council member who was a World War II veteran. Listening to Mojado describe his experience in the service inspired Lattin to create a documentary about Native American contributions to the Armed Forces “In talking to Gilbert, I realized that if we don’t gather our veterans’ stories, sooner or later they’ll pass away and we’ll never know,” said Lattin. “It would be an entire military history that would go undocumented.” Lattin approached the Pala Tribal Council for funding to create the documentary which was approved by Pala Chairman Robert Smith. Lattin hired Craig Harris to direct the film, while he secured interviews with Pala veterans to tell their stories.. Lattin was recognized for this achievement by the San Diego Unified School District, who inducted him into their Hall of Fame in 2013.

The film aired on KPBS in San Diego, and received an Emmy Award in 2013.

OurWorlds: Augmented Reality

In 2018, Lattin started a project called OurWorlds, working with app developer Catherine Eng to develop an augmented reality project in collaboration with Native American artists and leaders. Lattin was invited to speak on a panel titled, “Reclaiming Indigenous History and Culture through Comics” at Comic-Con@Home 2020, along with sculptor Johnny Bear Contreras and comic book author Chag Lowry.

Awards and Honors

• Distinguished Citizen Award, Enterprise City Council, 2003
• Soldiers Medal for Valor
• Pala Tribal Executive Council, Secretary, 2005-2011
• Emmy Award for “Defending the Homeland”, a documentary about Native American veterans
• La Jolla Historical Society, Board of Directors
• San Diego Unified School District Hall of Fame
• Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial, American Legion