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Honoring the first Native American to earn a medical degree [1]

['Lauren Monsen']

Date: 2023-11-28 05:03:57+00:00

In 1913, Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first Native American to earn a medical degree, opened a hospital on the Omaha Reservation. For years, she had traveled the northeastern Nebraska reservation and its surroundings, treating patients, both Native American and white.

She braved bad weather and often worked 20 hours a day. “My office hours are any and all hours of the day and night,” La Flesche Picotte once said.

The hospital, the first on Native American land that was not funded by the federal government, was a testament to her dedication as a health-care provider to her people and to those in surrounding communities.

Born on the Omaha Reservation in 1865, La Flesche Picotte chose to become a doctor after witnessing a sick Native American woman die after a white doctor refused to come to her aid.

She was admitted to the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, one of the few medical schools in the United States or elsewhere at that time that accepted women.

La Flesche Picotte graduated in 1889, a year early and first in her class, according to the U.S. National Park Service. At 24, she returned to the Omaha Reservation and served as the sole medical provider for its residents. She also worked to address public health crises affecting Native Americans, including tuberculosis and alcoholism.

“I shall always fight good and hard, even if I have to fight alone,” she said. La Flesche Picotte died in 1915. The hospital she founded is now a museum named in her honor.

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[1] Url: https://share.america.gov/honoring-the-first-native-american-to-earn-a-medical-degree/

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