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This is one in an occasional series on “forgotten” ancestors who may not have been fully recognized for their achievements.
Raymond Wilson
Special to ICT
Honored with the title of “Grandmother of American Indian Nurses” by the American Indian Nurses Association in 1978, Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail, a registered nurse and prominent Crow activist, led vigorous campaigns for decades to improve health conditions for Native people.
She became one of the first Native women to become a registered nurse, and would go on to marry into the prominent Yellowtail family in Montana, where she would fight for health reforms and against the forced sterilization of Native women — an issue she, herself, experienced after going into a hospital for a different surgery.
Susie Walking Bear, back row center, stands with her graduating class from Boston City Hospital’s School of Nursing in 1923. She finished her nursing training at Franklin County Public Hospital in Greenfield, Massachusetts, before eventually returning to the Crow Reservation where she married medicine man Thomas Yellowtail. Credit: Montana Historical Society via the Montana State Library
Susie Walking Bear was born on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana on Jan. 27, 1903, and attended Catholic mission schools in Pryor, Montana, and later in Lodge Grass, Montana. At age 12, she became an orphan, and an aunt raised her.
Frances Shaw, a Baptist missionary on the reservation, recognized her potential, and convinced Susie to attend Bacone Indian School in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 1919. Walking Bear then accompanied Shaw to Northfield, Massachusetts, where she enrolled at Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies. Shaw employed her as a maid and babysitter.
At Northfield Seminary, however, Walking Bear faced racial bias, and she eventually quit working for Shaw after conditions became unbearable, with increasing household duties and Shaw’s critical attitudes toward her.
By then, Walking Bear had decided to become a nurse to help her people, and she received financial assistance to attend Franklin County Public School of Nursing in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in 1923. Walking Bear completed the requirements for her registered nursing degree from Boston City Hospital School of Nursing in 1927, as one of the first Native American women to become a registered nurse.
Walking Bear then joined the Indian Health Service and worked briefly as a nurse at several hospitals, including the Fond du Lac Indian Hospital in Cloquet, Minnesota. In 1928, she became a supervising nurse at the Crow Agency Hospital. It was those positions where she witnessed the horrible healthcare conditions, racial discrimination, and forced sterilization of Native women without their consent.
In 1929, Walking Bear married Thomas Yellowtail, who supported her healthcare reforms and later became a prominent spiritual leader. She resigned from the agency hospital, and moved with her husband to a ranch in Wyola, Montana.
Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail, one of the first Native American registered nurses, poses with her husband, Tom Yellowtail, a medicine man and Sun Dance Chief of the Crow Tribe, in this undated photo believed to have been taken between 1955 and 1970. Credit: Montana Historical Society via the Montana State Library
Yellowtail gave birth to two children in local hospitals, confirming her suspicions that Native women were abused in hospitals during childbirth. In 1934, she decided to have her third child born at home. But after giving birth, Yellowtail began having excruciating abdominal pains and she finally went to the Crow hospital to have a cyst removed from an ovary.
During the surgery, however, the White doctor sterilized her without her consent, and later told her that three children were enough.
When her brother-in-law Robert Yellowtail became superintendent of the Crow Reservation in 1934, he supported improved healthcare reforms and tried on several occasions to get Yellowtail appointed as a reservation field nurse. White officials refused, however, because they viewed her as a “troublemaker.”
By then, Yellowtail had become a midwife on the reservation, working for decades to help many Native women give birth using a combination of Western medical treatment and Crow healing customs. She had also received state and national recognition for her service on Crow health and education committees.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Yellowtail to the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Indian Health, where she continued to serve under the administrations of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.
Yellowtail visited reservations, investigated medical problems and made recommendations to improve Native health.
Yellowtail was also a member of the renowned Crow Ceremonial dancing group that performed in several European countries in the early 1950s. She later became a chaperone for the Miss American Indian Pageant in Sheridan, Wyoming.
Yellowtail received many honors for her work, including the President’s Award for Outstanding Nursing Health Care in 1962, and she was inducted into the Montana Hall of Fame in 1987 and the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 2002. The Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail Endowed Fund for Native American Nursing Students was created in 2026 at Montana State University.
Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail dedicated her life to improving healthcare conditions for Native Americans and ending abuses suffered by Native women. She believed Native people should acquire an education and supported Native sovereignty.
She died at her home in Wyola, Montana, on Dec. 25, 1981, at age 78. Her husband, Thomas, died in 1993.
Sources: Montana Historical Society; Brianna Theobald, “Reproduction on the Reservation” (2019) and other publications; Michael Oren Fitzgerald, “Yellowtail, Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief” (1991).
The post LEST WE FORGET: Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail appeared first on ICT.
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