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Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte

About the Sculpture

This bronze sculpture of trailblazing Nebraska Native American physician Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte is located on Centennial Mall in a space next to the Scottish Rite Temple across from the State Office building between L and M streets. Created by sculptor Benjamin Victor, the statue shows the doctor in a traditional Omaha period dress toting her medical bag, and plans call for her likeness to be placed on a limestone platform surrounded by native plants. On October 11, 2021 the life size sculpture was unveiled and dedicated with all Nebraskan tribes present. The sculpture is funded by a generous local donor.

Rotating around the sculpture of Dr. Susan la Flesche Picotte to show all angles.

Dedication of

Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte

June 17, 1865 – September 18, 1915

Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte was born on the Omaha Reservation to Chief Joseph La Fleshe (Iron Eyes) in northeast Nebraska in 1865 and died in 1915. She became the first Native person to earn a medical degree in 1889. After receiving her degree from Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania , she returned to the reservation to care for Native and non-Native residents, and two years before her death, Picotte opened a hospital in Walthill.

Her drive and dedication for medical care came from an early experience with unequal care for the Omaha tribespeople by white doctors. She campaigned for public health and for the formal, legal allotment of land to members of the Omaha tribe. She was fluent in English and her native tongue, could speak French and Otoe, too.

La Flesche graduated second in her class in 1865 from the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, now Hampton University. Three years later she received her medical degree from Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP). She graduated as valedictorian of her class and could practice medicine. But as a woman, she could not vote—and as an Indian, she could not call herself a citizen under American law. After a year of internship, she returned home to provide healthcare to the Omaha tribespeople at the government boarding school.

In her remarkable career she served more than 1,300 people over 450 square miles, giving financial advice and resolving family disputes as well as providing medical care at all hours of the day and night. Two years before her death in 1913, she opened a hospital in the reservation town of Walthill, Nebraska.

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About the Sculptor Ben Victor

benjaminvictor.com

Benjamin Victor, one of the nation's leading figurative artists, was commissioned to create the piece which captures the powerful image of Chief Standing Bear in 2017. The sculpture presents the Chief as he stands in a courtroom with his right hand outstretched fighting for the freedom to return to his homeland to bury his son. Standing Bear's simple, yet powerful declaration of "I Am A Man" would echo through the annals of United States history as one of the defining moments in our nations struggles for equality and civil rights.

At 26, Victor became the youngest artist ever to have a sculpture in the National Statuary Hall, when his sculpture of Native activist Sarah Winnemucca was installed in the U.S. Capitol. Nine years later, he became the only living artist to have two works in the hall.