Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail

Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail (1903 to 1981) was a Crow and Oglala Sioux nurse from Montana who became the first registered nurse of Crow descent and one of the first Native American women to graduate as a registered nurse in the United States. Born near Pryor on the Crow Reservation, she trained in nursing in Massachusetts in the 1920s, then returned to the Indian Health Service hospital at the Crow Agency, where she worked to modernize health services and to oppose the forced sterilization of Native American women. From about 1930 to 1960 she travelled as a consultant, documenting shortcomings in Indian Health Service care for the Public Health Service, and she later served on federal advisory bodies on Indian health. She founded the first professional association of Native American nurses, received the President's Award for Outstanding Nursing in 1962, and was inducted into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 2002 as its first Native American member. Sources differ on which Native nurses qualified before her and on the year and school of her graduation.