Rebekah Reads: A Warrior of the People Book Review

Joe Starita's "A Warrior of the People" tells the story of Dr. Susan La Flesch Picote.

Webb, Harry A. / Public domain

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Susan_La_Flesche_Picotte_00691200.jpg

  

Susan La Flesch is a genuine inspiration and Starita portrays her as a strong, faith-filled woman using many of her own letters and writings. Follow Susan from childhood on the plains to boarding schools, medical school, then to marriage and her medical practice. At each school she attended, Susan dedicated herself to her studies, all with the goal of returning to the Omaha people to provide medical care. As Susan grows and changes, so too do her people. During Susan's life, the Omaha reservation was divided into individual allotments while the rest of their land was sold by the government. By the time Susan died, her people were independent owners of their own land. 

While Straita does not hide the challenges of government control, drugs, and alcohol, I appreciate that Susan and the Omaha people are presented positively, rather than as victims.  

 

I did struggle with the repetition of the timeline. Frequently, the author recaps that Susan was born during a buffalo hunt, her people lived in the Village of the Make Believe White Man, she attended schools in the east, attended medical school, and returned to her people. While it's all true, the repetition didn't seem to serve any significant purpose in the biography. 

One of the significant details brought out in this biography is the fact that in 1879, a century into the nationhood of the United States, Judge Dundy declared indigenous individuals people (Ma-chu-nah-zha v. George Crook). It would be another 1/2 century before indigenous people would become citizens under the Indian Citizenship Act, nearly another century before voting rights would be fought for under the Native American Voting Rights Act of 2019, and nearly 150 years before the Supreme Court of the United States would declare that the United States must be held to their treaties. 

The great accomplishment of this work is the detailed biography of the first female indigenous medical doctor in the United States. I recommend "A Warrior of the People" to anyone interested in US History, Nebraska history,  indigenous people, or women's history.

The author, Joe Starita, is a professor in Nebraska. He has also researched and written about Standing Bear's case & the personhood of indigenous people. 

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• I read a borrowed copy of the book and this review was unsolicited.