On Centennial Mall, near Nebraska’s State Capitol, stands the statue of the first Native American physician Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte.
Susan La Flesche (1865-1915) was born and raised on the Omaha Reservation in eastern Nebraska, the daughter of the Omaha tribe leader. Her family had European and Indigenous ancestry, and she spoke Omaha and English fluently. She decided to become a physician for the Omaha people following an incident when she witnessed an Indigenous woman dying after being prevented medical care by a white doctor.
In 1886, La Flesche graduated from the Hampton Institute (a historically black college) in Hampton, Virginia, and decided to continue her studies at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. With financial support from the Connecticut Indian Association, she completed three years of medical school and graduated at the top of her class on March 14th, 1889.
That same year La Flesche accepted the position of government physician at the Omaha Agency Indian School and naturally became the community and reservation doctor. La Flesche never stopped serving as the community doctor, even after she married Henry Picotte (1894) and had two sons.
Besides treating patients, La Flesche was a health educator, temperance advocate, reformer, advisor, and community leader. The hospital she established on the reservation in 1913 was the first hospital for any Indian reservation not funded by the government. It was named in her honor and served as a hospital until the 1940s. The center has been in the process of becoming a health and community center and museum in recent years.
Unveiled on October 11th, 2021, Nebraska’s first Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the sculpture is one of the few statues in the world honoring an Indigenous woman.
The artist Benjamin Victor sculpted it, depicting Picotte in a 7’6″ bronze statue wearing traditional Omaha clothes and holding her medical bag in her left hand. Victor also created the Sarah Winnemucca statue in the National Statuary Hall collection in the US Capitol; it was his first commission as a sculptor when he was only 26 years old, the youngest artist to present a work in the US Capitol.
Community advocate Larry Small led the effort to commemorate Picotte, commissioned and gifted the sculpture to the city, wishing more people would learn about Picotte’s legacy.
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