Susan La Flesche Picotte
Susan La Flesche Picotte was born on June 17, 1865. See ranking, bio blurb, and everyone else born that day.
About Susan La Flesche Picotte
Susan La Flesche Picotte (June 17, 1865 – September 18, 1915) was a Native American medical doctor and reformer and member of the Omaha tribe. She is widely acknowledged as one of the first Indigenous people, and the first Indigenous woman, to earn a medical degree. She campaigned for public health and for the formal, legal allotment of land to members of the Omaha tribe. She served as a physician to over 1,200 Omaha people on the reservation, working under conditions of significant pay disparity compared to white government doctors. In 1913, after no Commissioner of Indian Affairs during her life supported government-funded hospital for Native Americans, she founded the Walthill Hospital, the first privately funded hospital on a Native American reservation. Picotte was an active social reformer as well as a physician. She worked to discourage the consumption of alcohol on the reservation where she worked as the physician, as part of the temperance movement. Picotte also campaigned for the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis, which then had no cure, as part of a public health campaign. She also worked to help other Omaha navigate the bureaucracy of the Office of Indian Affairs and receive the money owed to them for the sale of their land. She began her career as an advocate for assimilation, but her repeated experiences with federal corruption gradually transformed her into a critic of the United States Indian policy.