by Sophie Lucas
When Susan La Flesche Picotte was a child, she witnessed a sick native woman die because a white doctor refused to treat her. She believes this is what inspired her to pursue her work in medicine. La Flesche was a physician, a member of the temperance movement, and played an active part in pushing for social reform. As a member of the Omaha tribe, she was dedicated to providing health services to those in her community. During her lifetime, she served over 1,300 patients in a 450-square-mile area.
Susan La Flesche Picotte was born in June of 1865, and from a young age, she was urged to assimilate into Euro-American culture. They didn’t give her a traditional Omaha name and prevented her from getting traditional tattoos on her forehead. The main reason for this is that they believed that for Omaha tradition to survive, they must adapt to a white world. She would use this later in life when she would appeal to people's ideas that natives are “uncivilized” to make up for the lack of care given to them.
La Flesche attended the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, one of the few medical schools that would take in women. She appealed to the Women’s National Indian Association for funding for her education. The WNIA sought to encourage Victorian values in Native Americans and sought to spread “cleanliness” and “godliness.” She played to their values of instilling Euro-American values by saying she wanted to provide medical care to her people and spread cleanliness and hygiene as well. Regretfully, at the time, this was all she could do because they were considered incompetent by the WNIA and a majority of white people. The good that comes out of this is that she was then able to get all of her schooling paid for by the WNIA. In the end, she graduated valedictorian of her class and got the position of the government physician for the Omaha Agency Indian School.
While practicing medicine, she often had to work 20-hour work days, and in her first office, it was only 12 feet by 16 feet. She usually made house calls for people with tuberculosis, influenza, cholera, dysentery, and trachoma. La Fleshche tirelessly worked to support the Omaha people and even helped with public health policies. She was a part of the temperance movement because alcoholism was very prevalent in the Omaha nation, but also, even more personally, her husband was an alcoholic. Even then, she supported the temperance movement because her community would be taken advantage of because of it. White businessmen would often use alcohol as a way to take advantage of Omaha people when making land deals. She then helped open the first privately funded hospital on the reservation. La Flesche was a chair member on the state health committee of the Nebraska Federation of Women's Clubs, and she led a movement to educate people on public health because of her belief that education could help prevent many diseases.
Even with her position as a doctor, she was also a tremendous leader in the community. Standing up for Omaha land rights and interests. She would help resolve issues where Omaha people were taken advantage of by white people for their land. While doing this, she even discovered a group of people who were part of a syndicate that continuously committed land fraud on the reservation. In an attempt to help her people, she, in what seemed like an odd move and against all her previous stances, said that the Omaha people were too incompetent to protect themselves against fraud. This was seen as very strange because, in all her life, she had insisted that they were just as competent as any other. In the end, she said this to make a statement to the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) in DC because, in reality, the incompetence was the fault of the OIA. The Omaha people were perfectly capable of handling their affairs. The issue was that the OIA had stifled any growth the Omaha people tried to participate in. Compared to white people, there was a lot more red tape that was holding them back, treating them as children instead of genuinely competent people ready to participate in democracy. Sadly, despite her fighting, in the end, many people still lost their ancestral lands and had to become dependent on the OIA.
Susan La Flesche Picotte was an activist for her people despite having to work within the constraints of a racist white society. As the first Native American doctor, she did all she could to provide health and wellness to her people. She had to mold herself to how she was “meant” to be viewed to advocate and help the Omoha people. When she passed away after tirelessly trying to build a bridge between the two worlds, three priests eulogized her. Still, the person who delivered the last words at her funeral was a member of the Omaha tribe who gave the final words in the Omaha language.