While we can’t change the past, we can be champions for a future of cultural equality. I wanted to learn more about contemporary Native American heritage. I’d like to share two standouts
Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first Native American woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, graduating from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1889. A member of the Omaha tribe, she grew up on the Omaha Reservation in northeast Nebraska, where she once watched a native woman die because the local white doctor refused to give her care. Since that memory was what inspired her to become a physician, she eventually returned to Nebraska, where she established a private practice serving both Native American and white patients. Two years before her death from cancer in 1915, she achieved her life’s dream when she opened her own hospital on the Omaha Reservation—the first hospital built on Native American land without government assistance. Today, the Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte Memorial Hospital in Walthill, Nebraska, is home to a museum honoring her legacy. ðŸ¥
When he was elected to serve Colorado in the U.S. Senate in 1992, Ben Nighthorse Campbell was the only Native American serving in Congress and the first Native American to serve in the Senate in more than 60 years. Descended from a Portuguese immigrant and a Northern Cheyenne Indian, he had many lives before he was a lawmaker. He was a Korean War veteran, an Olympic judo wrestler, and even a renowned jewelry artist. When he retired from the Senate in 2005, his major achievements included passing legislation to secure Native American water rights, protect wilderness areas, prevent fetal alcohol syndrome, create Colorado’s Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, and establish the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. 🎖
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones 🦃🌽🥧ðŸ·
From BestLifeOnline: 13 Important Native Americans You Didn’t Learn About in School