S1 • E16 Jun 17, 2020 11m
Susan La Flesche Picotte (1865-1915) grew up on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska at a time when the U.S. government was forcing American Indian tribes onto reservations, and mandating their assimilation into white society. Her parents encouraged her pursuit of an Anglo-American formal education, and Picotte graduated from Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1889, becoming the first American Indian physician. She returned to the Omaha reservation and spent her career making house calls by horse-drawn buggy across its 20,000 acres, first for the Office of Indian Affairs, and then in an independent practice. In addition to her medical work, La Flesche was a community leader and active in the Temperance Movement, working tirelessly for her tribe to combat the theft of American Indian land and public health crises including the spread of tuberculosis and alcoholism. In 1913, Picotte fulfilled a lifelong dream -- founding the first privately funded hospital on an American Indian reservation. Interviewees: biographer Joe Starita, author of A Warrior of the People: How Susan La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Inequality to Become America's First Indian Doctor; Renée Sans Souci, Omaha Teaching Artist and Educator; and Dr. Yvette Roubideaux, a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe, also Standing Rock Sioux, and the first woman to lead the Indian Health Service.
