Сусан Ла Флеш Пикотт: Первая американская женщина-врач из числа коренных народов.

Omaha Indigenous physician and reformer (1865–1915)

Susan La Flesche Picotte (June 17, 1865 – September 18, 1915, Omaha) 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. 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.

Susan La Flesche was born in June 1865 on the Omaha Reservation in eastern Nebraska. Her parents were culturally Omaha with European and Indigenous ancestry and had lived for periods of time beyond the borders of the reservation. They married in either 1845 or 1846. Gale was also the stepdaughter of prominent Nebraska fur trader and statesman Peter A. Sarpy. Like her husband, Mary Gale identified as Omaha. Although she understood French and English, she reportedly refused to speak any language other than Omaha. La Fesche was the youngest of four girls, including her sisters Susette (1854–1903), Rosalie (1861–1900), and Marguerite (1862–1945). Her older half brother Francis La Flesche, born in 1857 to her father's second wife, later became renowned as an ethnologist, anthropologist and musicologist (or ethnomusicologist), who specialized in the study of the Omaha and Osage cultures. As she grew, La Flesche learned the traditions of her heritage, but her parents felt certain rituals would be detrimental in the white world. They did not give La Flesche an Omaha name and prevented her from receiving traditional tattoos across her forehead. She spoke Omaha with her parents (especially her mother), but her father and oldest sister Susette encouraged her to speak English with her sisters, so that she would be fluent in both languages. As a child, LaFlesche witnessed a sick Indian woman die after a white doctor refused to treat her. She later credited this tragedy as her inspiration to train as a physician, so she could provide care for the people with whom she lived on the Omaha Reservation.

As a child, La Flesche was educated at the mission school on the Omaha reservation. It was run first by Presbyterians and then by Quakers, after the enactment of President Ulysses S. Grant's Peace Policy in 1869. The reservation school was a boarding school where Native children were taught the practices of European Americans to assimilate them into white society. After several years at the mission school, La Flesche left the reservation for Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she studied at the Elizabeth Institute for two and a half years. She returned to the reservation in 1882 and taught at the agency school. She left again to study at the Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, from 1884 to 1886. It had been established as an historically black college after the American Civil War, but also educated Native American students. La Flesche attended Hampton with her sister Marguerite, her stepbrother Cary, and ten other Omaha children. The girls learned housewifery skills and the boys learned vocational skills as part of the practical skills promoted at the school. While La Flesche was a student at the Hampton Institute, she became romantically involved with a young Sioux man named Thomas Ikinicapi. She referred to him affectionately as "T. I. ", but broke off her relationship with him before graduating from Hampton. La Flesche graduated from Hampton on May 20, 1886, as the salutatorian of her class. La Flesche asked for financial assistance from family friend Alice Fletcher, an ethnographer from Massachusetts who had a broad network of contacts within women's reform organizations. La Flesche had previously helped nurse Fletcher back to health following a flareup of inflammatory rheumatism. The WNIA sought to "civilize" Native women by encouraging Victorian values of domesticity, and sponsored field matrons whose task was to teach Native American women "cleanliness" and "godliness." La Flesche, in writing to the Connecticut Indian Association, had described her desire to enter the homes of her people as a physician and teach them hygiene as well as curing their ills, a mission in line with the Victorian virtues of domesticity that the Association wanted to encourage. The Association sponsored La Flesche's medical school tuition, and also paid for her housing, books and other supplies. She is considered the first person to receive aid for professional education in the United States. In June 1889, La Flesche applied for the position of government physician at the Omaha Agency Indian School; she was offered the position less than two months later. After her graduation, she went on a speaking tour at the request of the Connecticut Indian Association, assuring white audiences that Native Americans could benefit from white civilization. She maintained her ties with the Association after medical school. They appointed her as a medical missionary to the Omaha after graduation, and the Association funded purchase of medical instruments and books for her during her early years of practicing medicine in Nebraska.

La Flesche returned to the Omaha reservation in 1889 to work as the physician at the government boarding school on the reservation, run by the Office of Indian Affairs. There, she was responsible for teaching the students about hygiene and keeping them healthy. Though she was not obligated to care for the broader community, the school was closer to many people than the official reservation agency, and La Flesche cared for many members of the community as well as for the children of the school. La Flesche often had 20 hour workdays and was responsible for the care of over 1,200 people. From her office in a corner of the schoolyard, with the supplies provided by the Connecticut Indian Association, she helped people with their health but also with more mundane tasks, such as writing letters and translating official documents. La Flesche was widely trusted in the community, making house calls and caring for patients sick with tuberculosis, influenza, cholera, dysentery, and trachoma. Her first office, which measured 12 by 16 feet, doubled as a community meeting place. For several years, she traveled the reservation caring for patients, on a government salary of $500.00 per year, in addition to the $250 from the Women's National Indian Association for her work as a medical missionary. In December 1892, LaFlesche became very sick, and was bedridden for several weeks. In 1893, she took time off to care for her ailing mother and also to restore her own health. She resigned later that year to take care of her dying mother. In 1894, La Flesche met and became engaged to Henry Picotte, a Sioux Indian from the Yankton agency. He had been married before and divorced his wife. Many of La Flesche's friends and family were reportedly surprised at the romance, but the two were married in June 1894. Picotte and her husband had two sons: Caryl, born in 1895 or 1896, and Pierre, born in early 1898. Picotte continued to practice medicine after the birth of her children, depending on the support of her husband to make that possible. Picotte's practice treated both Omaha and white patients in the town of Bancroft and surrounding communities. If necessary, Picotte would even take her children on house calls with her sometimes.

In addition to caring for the Omaha people's immediate medical problems, Picotte sought to educate her community about preventive medicine and other public health issues, including temperance. Alcoholism was a serious problem on the Omaha reservation, and a personal one for Picotte: her husband Henry was an alcoholic. White businesspeople used alcohol to take advantage of Omahas while making land deals. Picotte, as reservation physician and a prominent member of the community, was well aware of the damage such practices caused. La Flesche supported measures such as coercion and punishment to dissuade individuals from alcohol consumption within the Omaha community. Under her father's rule, a secret police system was instilled which supported corporal punishment to discipline those who consumed alcohol. She is buried in Bancroft Cemetery, Pierre Picotte lived in Walthill, Nebraska, for most of his life and raised a family of three children. In her career, Picotte served over 1,300 patients in a 450 square mile area. is named after Picotte and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1993. The hospital has also been named as one of the 11 most endangered places of 2018 by the National Trust. Work is underway to raise funds for its restoration. An elementary school in western Omaha Nebraska is named after Picotte. On June 17, 2017, the 152nd anniversary of her birth, Google released a Google Doodle honoring Picotte. In 2018, a bust of Picotte was dedicated at the Martin Luther King Jr. Transportation Center in Sioux City. In 2019, a statue of La Flesche was dedicated as part of Hampton University's Legacy Park. On October 11, 2021, Nebraska's first officially recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a bronze sculpture of Picotte by Benjamin Victor was unveiled by her descendants on Lincoln’s Centennial Mall. Judi Gaiashkibos (national leader on Native American issues) was instrumental in elevating Picotte's legacy and the creation of the sculpture.