Highlight of the Month: Native American Indian Heritage Month
The whole month of November is declared as Native American Indian Heritage Month, to honor the Native people in the US to share their culture, traditions and ways of life.
There have been many Native American nurses who have paved the way for nurses, but one who stands out is Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail. She received her MSN and pioneered advanced and better health care for all Native Americans. Susie was from the Crow reservation and worked at the Bureau of Indian Affairs Hospital in Montana, where she grew up.
She noticed many issues including the sterilization of Crow women without consent and helped to fix this by helping the women stand up for themselves, improved their healthcare and prevented further abuse. She also aided to provide the proper infrastructure to transport Navajo infants and their mothers to hospitals to prevent harm that they faced for years on end, prior. For all her efforts, she received the President’s Award for Outstanding Nursing Health Care and she was named the “grandmother of American Indian Nurses” by the American Indian Nurses Association. She truly paved the way for a better future for all nurses.
