Mary Greyeyes was born November 14, 1920, in the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation reserve in Marcelin, Saskatchewan.

[6] Although Greyeyes worried that her grade 8 certification from the residential school would be inadequate, she passed the CWAC test and was accepted.

[8] In June 1942, not long after she had enlisted, Greyeyes was approached and asked to participate in a photo-shoot to encourage more women to join the army.

Harry Ball, a Cree man and World War I veteran from the Piapot First Nation, was convinced to pose for the photo in Plains Chief regalia.

In return for the photo-shoot, which was staged on Piapot land, Ball was paid $20, while Greyeyes received a free lunch and a new uniform.

[9] For decades, the photo would be identified only by a caption reading "Unidentified Indian princess getting blessing from her chief and father to go fight in the war".

[1] It was only around 1995 that the record was finally corrected, when Greyeyes's daughter-in-law, Melanie Fahlman Reid, learned that the photo hung in the Canadian War Museum with the incorrect caption.

Reid, who had discussed the photo personally with Greyeyes, provided a more accurate explanation of the photograph from her mother-in-law's recollection.

[1] Although Greyeyes sometimes encountered racism while in service – once resulting in her boarding outside the barracks – she found her overall army experience a positive one, later commenting that her wartime years had been "the best days of her life".

One of her fellow corps members later recalled that Greyeyes was "a lovely young woman ... who spent much of her spare time reading and studying literature.

According to an interview with her daughter-in-law, Mary Greyeyes was approached by government officials for a second publicity photo towards the end of the war.

Greyeyes worked as a restaurant cook in Victoria, later finding employment as an industrial seamstress when the family moved to Vancouver in the 1960s.