Susan La Flesche (1865 – 1915), the First Native American to Earn a Medical Degree. With few rights as a woman and as an Indian, the pioneering doctor provided valuable health care and resources to her Omaha community. As a child, Susan La Flesche had watched a sick Indian woman die because the local white doctor would not give her care. She later credited this tragedy as her inspiration to train as a physician, so she could provide care for the people. None of the challenges of her education could fully prepare La Flesche for what she encountered upon her return to the reservation as physician for the Omaha Agency. Soon after she opened the doors to her new office, the tribe began to file in. Many of them were sick with tuberculosis or cholera, others simply looking for a clean place to rest. She became their doctor, but in many ways their lawyer, accountant, priest and political liaison on a reservation stretching nearly 1,350 square miles. She made house calls, traveling for hours to reach a single patient. Yet, she would often encounter Omahas who rejected her diagnosis and questioned everything she’d learned in a school so far away. And before she died in September 1915, she solicited enough donations to build the hospital of her dreams in the reservation town of Walthill, Nebraska, the first modern hospital in Thurston County.

Zitkala-Ša (“Red Bird”) (1876 – 1938) was born on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota, a member of the Yankton Dakota Sioux. When she was eight, Quaker missionaries visited the Reservation, taking several of the children to Wabash, Indiana to attend White’s Indiana Manual Labor Institute. Zitkala-Ša left despite her mother’s disapproval. At this school, Zitkala-Ša was given the missionary name Gertrude Simmons. She attended the Institute until 1887. She was conflicted about the experience and wrote both of her great joy in learning to read and write and to play the violin, as well as her deep grief and pain of losing her heritage Dakota culture into which she was born and raised. Her later books were among the first works to bring traditional Native American stories to a widespread white English-speaking readership. Working with American musician William F. Hanson, Zitkala-Ša wrote the libretto and songs for The Sun Dance Opera, (1913), the first American Indian opera, based on Sioux and Ute cultural themes. She was co-founder of the National Council of American Indians in 1926, which was established to lobby for Native people’s right to United States citizenship and other civil rights they had long been denied. Zitkala-Ša served as the council’s president until her death in 1938.

Wilma (1945-2010) was the sixth of eleven children; born to a Cherokee father. When Wilma was 11, the family moved from their rural ancestral home in Oklahoma to the bay area of California. Wilma did not want to leave Oklahoma, but it was in California that she first developed her social activism. She became involved in San Francisco’s Indian Center and was captivated by Native American efforts to reclaim Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Wilma returned to Oklahoma in 1977 and became the first female Principle Chief of the modern Cherokee Nation, the second largest tribe in the United States in 1983 on the strength of her reputation as a community leader. As chief, Mankiller focused on education, job training, and healthcare for her people. She was a consensus builder, working with the federal government to pilot a self-government agreement for the Cherokee Nation and with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Maria Tallchief (1925-2013) At the age of 17, Maria Tallchief moved to New York City to pursue her dreams of becoming a dancer. She went from dance company to dance company looking for work. Many of the companies discriminated against her because of her Native American ancestry. She was selected as an understudy in the Ballet Russe, the premier Russian ballerina company in the US. In 1942, when one of the lead ballerinas abruptly stepped down, Tallchief was called to stand in and performance received positive reviews from top critics. As her career began to take off, many tried to persuade Tallchief to change her last name so that dance companies would not discriminate against her. She refused and continued to perform as Maria Tallchief. In 1947, she became the first American to dance with the Paris Opera Ballet. One of Tallchief’s best-known roles was as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. Tallchief perform at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow in 1960, making her the first American to do so. After retiring from dancing, Tallchief and her sister opened the Chicago City Ballet, a ballet school and dance company. Never forgetting her Native American ancestry, she spoke out against injustices and discrimination. As prima ballerina, Tallchief not only broke barriers for Native Americans, she also became one of the only Americans recognized in European ballet companies.