Nursing History: New Fund Honors Crow Nurse

Montana State University created the Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail Endowed Fund for Native American Nursing Students in 2026. The financial vehicle supports future medical professionals and recognizes the career of a Crow nurse who advocated for Native health reforms for decades. The fund serves as a permanent institutional acknowledgment of her contributions to the field.

Susie Walking Bear was born on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana on Jan. 27, 1903. She attended Catholic mission schools in Pryor and Lodge Grass. An aunt raised her after she became an orphan at age 12. Frances Shaw, a Baptist missionary, identified her potential and helped her attend Bacone Indian School in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 1919. She later enrolled at Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies in Massachusetts, where she worked as a maid and babysitter for Shaw.

Walking Bear faced racial bias at the seminary and left after conditions became difficult. She decided to pursue nursing to assist her community. Financial assistance allowed her to attend Franklin County Public School of Nursing in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in 1923. She completed her registered nursing degree from Boston City Hospital School of Nursing in 1927. She was among the first Native American women to earn that credential.

She joined the Indian Health Service and worked at several facilities, including the Fond du Lac Indian Hospital in Cloquet, Minnesota. In 1928, she became a supervising nurse at the Crow Agency Hospital. In these roles, she observed racial discrimination and poor healthcare conditions. She also witnessed the forced sterilization of Native women without their consent.

Walking Bear married Thomas Yellowtail in 1929. They moved to a ranch in Wyola, Montana. She gave birth to two children in local hospitals, which confirmed her suspicions about hospital practices. During a surgery to remove an ovarian cyst after the birth of her third child, a doctor sterilized her without her permission. She later became a midwife on the reservation, blending Western medical treatment with Crow healing customs.

President John F. Kennedy appointed her to the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Indian Health in 1961. She continued serving under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. Her duties included visiting reservations, investigating medical issues, and recommending improvements. She also performed with the Crow Ceremonial dancing group in Europe in the early 1950s and chaperoned the Miss American Indian Pageant in Sheridan, Wyoming.

She received the President’s Award for Outstanding Nursing Health Care in 1962. The American Indian Nurses Association titled her the “Grandmother of American Indian Nurses” in 1978. She was inducted into the Montana Hall of Fame in 1987 and the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame in 2002. Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail died at her home in Wyola, Montana, on Dec. 25, 1981, at age 78.

Her husband, Thomas, died in 1993. The new endowed fund at Montana State University will continue to support students in her name. The establishment of the fund marks a formal addition to the historical record of Native American nursing leadership.