Page 32 - Spring 2019 Extension Magazine

32 INSPIRE

Cover Story

DR. MARY DESROSIER

COMING HOME

TO SERVE

First woman
in the Blackfeet tribe

to earn her MD
brings healing
to the reservation
she grew up on

s a doctor for Indian
Health Services on
the Blackfeet Indian
Reservation in
Browning, Montana,
Dr. Mary DesRosier North Dakota’s Indians Into Medicine a doctorate in medicine. Following
A serves her neigh- program. During her time away from her residency, she returned to the
bors, her friends, and her family — Browning she longed for home and reservation to practice medicine
and sees the face of God in them. returned several times to work at the with Indian Health Services.
DesRosier grew up in Browning, hospital on the reservation. “I left here with the intention of
in the shadow of the Rocky Moun- “I was lonesome for home the coming back here to work and live,”
tains, as a member of the Blackfeet whole time,” DesRosier admitted. she said. “There’s something about
Nation, and she leads a Eucharistic But each time she served her these mountains and this wind, and
prayer group at Little Flower Parish, people at the hospital, “there was the people, the culture, that makes it
the same church where she received peace in my heart that I knew that hard to live anywhere else.”
her first Communion. was what I was supposed to do,” Upon her homecoming, the
When she graduated high school, she said. Blackfeet tribe gave DesRosier her
DesRosier joined the University of When she graduated from the Native American name: Medicine
University of North Dakota School Victory Woman.
of Medicine, she became the first
woman in the Blackfeet tribe to earn