Share Your Ideas on Restoring Dr. Susan’s Hospital

Macy, Nebraska – Join area residents and friends of the Picotte Center at a lunchtime open house on Tuesday, April 16, to share  your ideas on restoring Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte’s hospital, located in Walthill, Nebraska.  The open house will be at the Nebraska Indian Community College (NICC) in Macy, Nebraska, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.  Lunch will be provided.

The hospital was built in 1913 by Dr. Picotte, who was the country’s first Native American physician.  She practiced medicine throughout the Omaha tribal reservation in the late 1890s and early 1920s, serving Native Americans and non-Indians alike, often traveling from patient to patient in her horse-drawn buggy.

Her story is told in “A Warrior of the People:  How Susan La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Inequality to Become America’s First Indian Doctor,” a book by Joe Starita, who teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  Nebraska Educational Television also produced a documentary on Dr. Picotte.

 USDA Rural Development is funding a planning process through a grant to the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs to produce a strategy for restoring the hospital building and a programming strategy for use of the facility once it is restored.  

 The open house on April 16 will provide an update on the restoration and program plan and offer participants an opportunity to share their ideas for repurposing the building.   Historic preservation architects will be on hand to explain what their condition assessment has revealed and to show how the building might be reconfigured for future uses.   NICC is at 1111 Highway 75 in Macy.  

 For More Information:  Milan Wall, mwall@heartlandcenter.info   or 402-474-7667