[This tape was transfered from a 16mm film original by Colorlab for the National Library of Medicine,
September 2007, NLM call number HF 5807]
[U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service]
[The Division of Indian Health presents]
[Career]
[Narrator:] This is the story of an opportunity offered to the daughters of the Navajo, Cherokee,
Choctaw, Seneca, to the Pueblo people, the Sioux, Winnebago, Apache, to all the Indian peoples.
The story of an unusual school.
Each year 80 young Indian girls enroll in the practical nurse school in Albuquerque.
They come to build a career for themselves and to learn to serve the cause of health
among their people.
They come from many tribes and many parts of the country.
From Oklahoma, Lita Mae Gumbai.
[Lita Mae Gumbai:] When they told me at Haskell Institute about the practical nursing school,
I really wanted to go.
My parents were so pleased.
[Narrator:] Norma Marie Ahiti.
[Norma Marie Ahiti:] I am smiling here in this picture taken at the school, but I was a little frightened,
I think, when packing to come.
[Narrator:] From New Mexico, Elsie Curlee.
[Elsie Curlee:] Our high school guidance teacher told us about the school.
[Narrator:] Harriet St. Clair's mother is a practical nurse.
Laurice Bohannon had two sisters at the practical nurse school before her.
Three cousins came together from Laguna.
[Della Davis:] Della Davis.
[Isabel Gaistein:] Isabel Gaistein.
[Violet Sophski:] Violet Sophski.
[Narrator:] Laverna Cucka of Arizona had always wanted to be a nurse,
and so had Rose Gomez of Taos.
[Rose Gomez:] I saw the good care the nurses gave in the hospital.
It made me want to help people that way too, especially the children.
[Narrator:] Nancy Cohawk came from Minnesota.
Laverna High Hawk and Georgia Anne Eagle came from South Dakota.
Janice Armstrong came the greatest distance, all the way from New York State.
Classes begin at the school in August and February each year.
Many students are brought by their family.
Others come by train.
Joe Heron meets them with the school car.
On arrival, Lita Mae Gumbai and Harriet St. Clair stop to look at the school sign.
They didn't quite know what to expect.
The first day was a busy one.
There were roommates to get acquainted with.
Lita Mae meets hers, Cecelia Mirabal from Taos.
With unpacking to do, getting settled, receiving uniforms, trying them on for the first time.
There were the teachers to meet, the school to see,
and that night a letter to write home.
[Lita Mae Gumbai:] Dear Mother, our school being next door to the Indian boarding school,
there isn't time to be homesick.
It is a big and friendly campus.
A church is just across the street.
We have a cat here named Professor.
[Narrator:] There is a great deal to learn, to do, to think about and understand.
Anatomy, the organs of the body, and the bones of the body.
The patient's skeleton here surrounded is Oscar Gerard Albuquerque, a favorite of the girls.
The words are difficult as Miss Mirabal discovers.
Students learn how to make hospital beds, how to read a thermometer, and take temperatures,
pulse, and respiration.
They learn about diets and how to serve food to bed patients.
How to take blood pressures.
The combined class and demonstration room lets some students watch while others practice.
Sometimes on each other,
as here with Lita Mae, learning how to get a patient out of bed and into a wheelchair.
Sometimes they practice with dolls.
They call them Mr. and Mrs. Chase, for the manufacturer who makes them.
Students also go to the Albuquerque sanatorium for a first look at what is ahead.
Here their pink uniforms are covered with a protective hospital gown, and they wear masks
over nose and mouth.
Time now to use what they have learned for real people, really ill, to feel needed and appreciated.
Back in classes at the school, questions are sometimes easy,
and everyone knows the answers.
Sometimes not so easy, and no one knows, but there are teachers and books to help.
It isn't all work, of course.
The chuck wagon is a popular interruption to classes.
Twice a day everyone flocks outside.
There's plenty of time for play, picnics and cookouts, hotdogs and watermelon.
Regular meals are taken across the campus in the big cafeteria with the boarding school students.
Sports are popular after class.
Strenuous tennis.
Less strenuous croquet.
Archery is a favorite, naturally.
Pull.
Bull's-eye. Twice.
There's time for dancing with each other on the school porch and for dancing with their dates,
perhaps from the boarding school.
Teas and parties are learning time as well as fun.
How to set the table, how to serve, and to meet guests.
Here one of the doctors is a guest.
Cards are played some free evenings and music others.
Television in the upstairs living room is a favorite.
And getting to know each other is probably best of all.
Exchanging confidences,
showing pictures in each other's rooms at night,
getting to know all about each other.
[Leta Mae Gumbai:] Some of us who are city girls had never seen a reservation.
Elsie Curlee showed me what a hogan is like.
Now I am anxious to visit one.
[Speaker 1:] I showed some of my Navajo paintings too.
They liked them.
They're beautiful.
[Girls:] How pretty!
[Speaker 2:] This is the way my people paint.
Apache art shows much action.
[Laverna Cucka:] The Hopis are the ones that make Kachina dolls.
See, this is a mudhead, one of our clowns.
[Speaker 3:] Do you like the pottery we make, in our pueblo?
[Girls:] Very much. Very much.
[Speaker 3:] My grandmother Maria made this.
[Narrator:] Other arts are exhibited also.
Miss Curlee shows how to make fry bread, and boyfriends and dates are discussed.
They chatter and giggle and have a fine time.
They become fast friends.
On Saturdays they go shopping, and to church on Sundays.
Letters home now are full of news.
[Lita Mae Gumbai:] Albuquerque is a busy city with busy streets, but it has quiet places, too.
The state university is here.
At sundown, Sandia Mountains to the east turn as pink as our uniforms.
[Narrator:] The storied Santa Fe is nearby.
The girls have opportunities to visit.
Graduate practical nurses serve at the Indian hospital at Santa Fe.
Many of the most famous southwestern pueblos are only a few hours from Albuquerque:
Taos,
San Ildefonso, home of the famous black pottery,
old Santa Ana,
Zuni, noted for its silversmiths
and its waffle gardens,
old Acoma in the sky,
Ariabe.
Many of these are home to some of the students, and they delight in showing them to their friends
who come from far away.
This is fabulous country, truly.
The land of the seven cities of Cibola, the ancient civilizations, and the wonders of nature.
Gallup, where the inter-tribal ceremonials are held each July, is only half a day away.
So many things to see, but after the weekend's sightseeing and fun,
back to books and classrooms, for examinations will be coming soon.
Names and grades are posted, and the girls crowd around to look for their marks.
At the end of four months, the successful students receive their caps.
Probation is over.
Now, indeed, there is news to write home, for Lita Mae, Norma Marie, Rose Gomez,
and the others will leave the school for a while to go out for clinical and public health experience,
working under supervision of registered nurses in the Indian Health Program.
Some will go to the Albuquerque sanatorium, already familiar.
Others, the majority, will go to the Navajo reservation.
Here they will serve the seven months at the Navajo Medical Center.
They will live in the nurses' home.
They have their own counselor and teacher, for here also they go to school,
but there is a difference.
They study now the care and problems affecting actual individual patients.
No longer practice. This is real.
Each has certain patients of her own to care for.
The elderly,
the newborn--a favorite assignment--
mother and baby together,
the restless youngsters in pediatrics.
Small problems sometimes present themselves.
[Lita Mae Gumbai:] The first time I was to give bed baths, my patient hid under her bed,
but after I coaxed her out, she didn't mind her bath at all.
[Narrator:] Student nurses learn here to give tender, considerate care.
They keep charts for their patients as the registered nurses do.
They prepare formulas.
They confer with the dietitian.
They help in preparing for surgery.
Rose Gomez here is making up the surgical bed.
They get the supplies necessary for the operations.
They observe in the operating room amphitheater during surgery.
Sometimes they assist at the scrub table.
The crowded waiting room on clinic days keeps them busy as they assist doctors and nurses,
acting as interpreters sometimes when there is a language difficulty.
Taking the patient's history.
Explaining about medicines and doctor's directions.
Practical nurse students also learn to assist the public health nurses,
making home visits on the Navajo reservation.
They assist in treating patients and demonstrating proper baby care.
They show how to bathe a baby with oil instead of the precious water so scarce on the reservation.
In visits to these widely scattered hogans on the vast reservation, which little Ms. Gumbai could not
even imagine short months ago, the practical nurse student comes to know its people...
its summer aspects,
its winter face.
Students also assist public health nurses in Indian health clinics at the pueblos.
Here Laverna High Hawk aids public health nurse Tua at Santa Ana, talking with patient Joe Garcia.
She confers with the mothers and helps weigh the baby.
Student days are full.
They go fast.
Four months of classwork.
Seven months' practical experience.
Now nearly time for graduation, the girls go back to the Albuquerque school
for a final review of studies.
Teachers make their final reports and evaluations, consideration for each girl's record.
There are state board examinations to take to secure their license to practice.
There are happy jokes.
Graduation invitations to send proudly home to parents.
Graduation uniforms to admire, and finally the great day.
[Speaker 4:] Graduation day.
We are different today.
When I came, I wouldn't have thought anything could be finer than our pink uniforms,
but oh, the whites!
[Narrator:] The whites, symbolic of all they have been waiting and working for.
Families gather from near and far.
Grandmother Maria.
The chief nurse officer of the United States Public Health Service arrives to address the girls.
The chief nurse of the Indian Health Service is there from Washington.
The doctors come also to wish them well.
Outside the auditorium the crowd grows.
Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters from Dakota, Colorado, Arizona, Oklahoma, Minnesota.
Inside, the Indian school band tunes up, and suddenly it's time.
In double line they march across the familiar campus to the auditorium
where the exercises will be held.
[Music]
[The new nurses march across the courtyard.]
[Music]
The chief nurse officer tells them...
[Chief Nurse:] I pray for each of you the reward of deep satisfaction which comes only to a nurse:
the satisfaction of a child healed, a troubled spirit comforted, a death rate lowered,
a new way of health succeeding.
[Narrator:] And as they listen, they're thinking big thoughts.
[Laverna Cucka:] This is an important day.
I am excited about it and what is coming.
[Harriet St. Clair:] I wonder who my first patient will be.
[Elsie Curlee:] It didn't seem possible that today would ever come.
My, I feel so proud.
I know my mother is, too.
[Narrator:] Miss Cucka rises to give the class response.
[Laverna Cucka:] During our year at the Indian School of Practical Nursing,
we have had the opportunity to learn our chosen profession.
For many of us it has been a lifelong desire, for we know that as a licensed practical nurse,
we can serve our Indian people and assist in improving their health.
[Narrator:] There are certificates and pins and congratulations.
And then they are graduates, and tomorrow is ahead.
They are eligible to serve as graduate licensed practical nurses in any state in the union
and in any hospital.
Many will serve by choice in Indian hospitals or field assignments throughout the West,
to help add health and knowledge of the gentle art of healing to the other arts and treasures of their people.
But even as these graduates leave, a new class is coming in.
Would you like to join them?
This is your invitation.
[The End
[Music]