I discovered my passion for nursing after experiencing a figure skating accident that left me sprawled on the ice with my tibula and fibula bending in places they were not meant to bend. These injuries required me to receive treatment from first responders, take an ambulance ride, experience the XRay process, wait 5 hours in the emergency room to be seen, spend another hour receiving emergency care, have surgery to place an internal fixation and attend all of the subsequent follow up appointments. Through the agony and discomfort, I was intrigued by the healthcare workers and the medical system. Prior to this experience, most of my healthcare had been received in my rural community at the local Indian Health Service clinic. During the weeks to follow while I was recovering from surgery, I was left with time to contemplate a few things: how intriguing healthcare is, why weren’t there any nurses or doctors who looked like me and why was the level of service so significantly different in the city and in my community. My passion for nursing is probably different from most: I have a passion to serve people in a healing way but I am also passionate about Native American healthcare. Data shows that less than .4% of nurses in the United States are Native American. This is obviously an underrepresentation of Native Americans in the nursing field, meaning that Native people do not have access to nurses or healthcare providers who look like them, understand the language and traditions, and know the hardships of reservation life. Data also tells us that Native Americans have experienced greater health risks and problems than other population groups. To address the disparities in the number of Native Nurses and Native Healthcare, it is imperative that more Native American people become nurses and return to their communities to provide quality and compassionate healthcare. My dream is to be the nurse who helps someone vanquish their fear of the hospital, cheers them up, provides excellent care and leaves them with a smile on their face. I hope to be the nurse who returns to the Navajo Nation with an appropriate cultural understanding and the ability to communicate in the Navajo Language. While I am only one individual, I can further help to address the lack of Native Nurses by being a role model and encouraging the community youth to pursue healthcare fields. Pediatric nursing is the area in which I would like to concentrate. I feel that by working with children and youth, I can not only care for their health needs but help educate them in proper nutrition, exercise and a healthy lifestyle. I can also help their parents understand the importance of vaccines and regular checkups. I believe that to reduce the increased health risks of Native Americans, we must begin with pediatric healthcare. I hope to have a positive impact on healthcare and pediatric healthcare by providing necessary treatments as well as education. Encouraging and influencing the children and youth within Native communities to a healthier future will have a great impact on other areas of nursing, and hopefully cause a reduction in the number of significant health issues and concerns in the community, across Indian Country, and across the nation. With the knowledge, skills, and clinical experience that I take away from my college experience, I hope to do all this and more and with this scholarship, I'll be able to do just that.

Being Navajo is who I am. It is difficult to separate the impact of being Native American from just being me because my culture is ingrained within me. My cultural upbringing impacts my thoughts, my actions and the way I see the world. It opens my eyes to viewing the discrepancies that I experience through a lens of change and opens my thoughts to how I can impact of change for my people. I have lived in many places, both on and off the reservation, but always among Native People such as the Pueblos of Northern New Mexico. This has allowed me to see how vastly different the world moves outside the bubble of our reservation home. The discrepancies were most apparent in the healthcare offered to those in the city versus the rural areas. When I spent a period of time in and out of the city hospital recovering from injury, I experienced the differences first hand and was able to grasp the depth and width of this gap. The level of service available in the city versus my small rural reservation community was significant. When I moved to college in Wisconsin, the difference was even more glaring in cities larger than Albuquerque and in a state with more financial security than New Mexico. The struggle Native people face daily is obvious. The most apparent to me is in educational opportunities and healthcare. Death and disease are rampant on the reservation due to the severe lack of funding, lack of medical resources, and geographical barriers. Along with that, less than 0.4% of all nurses in the United States are Native American, meaning that cultural and language barriers exist for our elders and those raised traditionally. This is why I pursue nursing; I want to do my part in relieving these burdens. I want to demonstrate to nursing schools outside my home state that Native nurses are worth supporting and reaching out to. I also want to be a role model for other young people in my community who may dream of pursuing a medical career. This is the point at which I became even further emboldened in my passion for nursing. Upon graduation, my career goals are to return to Navajoland and provide much needed nursing care to my people. With this scholarship's help, I can leave home for my education and return to my rural Navajo community with that knowledge. My passion for school also extends to my sport, which I would not be able to participate in while completing such a rigorous curriculum without access to a D3 institution of which there are none in my home state. I have worked hard in school my whole life, and with assistance, I can continue my dream of contributing to healthcare on the reservation. At my college, the Indigenous population is nearly non-existent. The Native American Student Association club has only two members. It’s lonely and isolating to be half of a whole and have no real space you can connect with people who understand what it’s like to grow up Indigenous: we were not offered AP classes or counseling; we weren’t even given science classes. As a result, it’s a constant fight just to set myself up for the successes that many non-Native kids have had the opportunity to experience in their schooling. I plan to use my experience as a Native woman in nursing school, athletics, and the world off the reservation to empower other aspiring nurses from the Navajo Nation, and to connect with the communities in which I will work.

Growing up among the dust and dirt of the reservation, I was taught to walk in beauty. Going into my adult years I want to embody this adage through the field of healthcare. Here, in the Navajo Nation, I see beauty everywhere around me. We are a tough people, survivalists of many tragedies and hardships. We fought for our land, our language, and our heritage. The elders are still passing on the teachings that have kept our people alive for centuries in an unforgiving yet generous land. With the education and varied experiences that I will receive off the reservation, I want to come back, help my people and hopefully inspire at least one young Native girl to pursue a healthcare career. As you may have learned during the worldwide pandemic, healthcare on reservations is inadequate at best. Healthcare on the Navajo reservation is deplorable with underfunded and underequipped clinics that are too small to serve their communities. There are only four small hospitals to serve more than 174,000 people on 16 million desolate acres. That is just larger than the state of West Virginia, which, in comparison, has 54 hospitals. My educational plan is to attend Nursing School at Carthage College in Wisconsin. I have decided to leave my homeland to attend school to receive a quality education and graduate as an RN. I will come home with experience in rural areas, reservations and the cities of Milwaukee and Chicago. Ultimately, I intend to continue my education and become a nurse practitioner making me a valuable asset on the reservation or any rural area. The obstacles that I have overcome to graduate and get accepted into a nursing program are many. Every member of the class of 2024 was affected in some manner by starting our high school years amid a worldwide pandemic. My state completely shut schools down for more than a year while the reservation kept us home for almost 2 years. Rural areas were hit especially hard due to the lack of internet service. I am fortunate to live in a home with running water and electricity while more than half of my classmates do not. Without electricity or internet, we were limited in the instruction that we could receive and were left to educate ourselves the best we could. Just as we were beginning to emerge from the dark days of Covid-19, I broke both of the bones in my lower leg and broke off a piece of the bone. This left me bedridden, requiring surgery, months of recovery time, and missed opportunities. I missed out on my dual credit courses because I could not join class by the deadline and social opportunities by remaining at home for several more months. I was not able to compete in cross country or track. More time was taken away from me and more educational experiences passed me by. My high school years were a struggle with mental health issues and an eating disorder in. There is also a language barrier between the majority of my teachers and the students which makes learning difficult and completing assignments a daunting task. My school does not offer a tract for college-bound students which limits the courses we can take. Reservation roads, except for the main highways, are not paved. When it rains or there is heavy snowfall, the roads become impassibly muddy resulting in two-hour delays or school closures. These are but a few of the obstacles that I have faced during my educational career. I have persevered to this point and like my ancestors, I will continue to persevere.

As someone who belongs to the Navajo tribe, I have seen firsthand the effects of historical trauma. My father is a part of the generation that experienced boarding school and Mormon Placement Programs; his parents and grandparents experienced the worst consequences of colonization. As a result of all that they have been through, depression has been passed down the line to me. I remember feeling lighter, more energetic, and carefree when I was younger. My eyes were not yet open to all that I had experienced. As I grew, I began to discover things my mind had hidden to protect me, remembering experiences that no child should have. This began to take a toll on my mental health, and due to my predisposition to mental illness, life began to get very hard. It all started manifesting when I entered middle school; I began to fight my mom about attending school. I became very anti-social; I didn’t want people to see or know me for fear that they would judge me. In the past, I loved school; I did my work and kept up, but when I got home, I found no motivation. My grades began to slip, and though I understood and could do the work, I didn’t see the point anymore. I just wanted to disappear and fade into oblivion so no one would touch or see me ever again. I soon found a way to do this through what I ate or didn’t eat. I began to restrict my food; often, I'd go days without eating, subsisting on diet soda and gum. Everything got harder and harder, snowballing until I was at the lowest point in my life. Now, I was constantly tired and cold, and on top of that, brain fog made my schoolwork harder, making me feel even dumber and more unmotivated. I fell behind on my work and, as a result, got less than stellar grades, adding to the snowball. On weekends, I couldn’t get out of bed; on weekdays, I didn’t care about my appearance. Despite my best efforts to isolate myself, a group of friends stayed by me the entire way. They didn’t know entirely what I was going through, but they would tell me later they knew I was struggling. I had no energy to go out to the court and play basketball. Instead, I’d sit in the library and take a much-needed break. Eventually, they began to join me there so that I wasn’t alone. I remember they made me a giant birthday card with supplies they had around their dorm. I’ve kept it all these years, and it still brings tears to my eyes to think of their kindness. I’d have to leave those friends and that school the following year. In the city, we lived in a house we couldn’t reasonably afford, and my father would have to make a 3-hour commute to see us every weekend; all of it was putting a strain on us financially and emotionally. As such, we moved into a very rural community, and life got more challenging. I’d continue my antisocial, food-avoidant streak. Over the years, however, I’ve grown to love this community. Last year was my junior year of high school, during which I finally overcame my anxiety, made friends, and joined the cross-country team. My newfound relationships and sports put purpose back into my life. Through running, I gained confidence and learned to value my nutrition. I’m still on my way to full recovery but life seems only to be looking up and I’m incredibly proud of how far I’ve come.

Although I have only participated in two years on the distance running team, it has quickly become one of my greatest passions in life. Though it is at times, tremendously painful, it is equally as rewarding. Everything melts away when I run and the world goes quiet. Through running I have discovered new things about myself, my limits, and my specialties, healed my relationship with many parts of myself, and connected with my community. At practice I connected with my underclassmen through the pain of difficult workouts and races, creating irreplaceable bonds. At the beginning of my first cross-country season and many times throughout I found myself as the only girl representing my team at the start line of races. But after many weeks of encouragement and persuasion, I managed to get several girls to come out and try. I was nominated team captain and wore the title like a badge of honor. We toiled in the trials of distance running and now with enough members to get team points, we had a good shot at state. Funnily enough, the stray dog that hung around our track every day at practice, whom we had dubbed Daisy, had traveled the 30-odd minutes to cheer us on at our neighboring school. We had a good laugh about our silly mascot, then it was time to get serious. Together we stood at the start-line at our district meet and prepared ourselves for what was to be our hardest race yet. The top 15 qualified for state along with the top two teams. At the end of a race, you know when you've given it your all, and when I crossed the line I knew I had. I had placed 14th overall and by the time everyone crossed the line, we had made enough points to place second in our district. This ragtag team was going to state, and we celebrated with burgers from the singular restaurant in town. Many of those same girls joined track that spring however, they said no to distance. Most of us subsequently ended up on a medley-relay team, and I as the distance enthusiast, was voted the 800 meter anchor. Once again, it all came down to the district meet to get ourselves to the state championships at UNM. As I rested on the bleachers after my 3200-meter race, I looked at myself and my teammates and appreciated how far we had come together. I was pulled from my wistfulness abruptly by my own anxiousness telling me it was time to warm up for the relay race. "First call for girls 1600-meter medley relay!" aka go-time. At last, our first runner lined up and we all said a silent prayer. The gun went off and, oh my god we're in first. We managed to fend off our competitors the whole race a feat previously deemed undoable, now it was time to do my part. I felt the baton in my hands and willed myself to go. I am not by any means a sprinter, it's why I find comfort in miles-long races, but I made myself into one that day. Fear pushed me through that race, mainly spurred on by my mother screaming from the stands, "SHES RIGHT BEHIND YOU". Normally you can hear breathing or the squishy sound of spikes on polyurethane if someone is close behind but I couldn't hear a thing. I knew there was a gap but I didn't trust it enough to slow down. I finished in first, securing our place at state. The girl behind me still had 200 meters to go.

I started running to heal my relationship with my body and my sense of self. Prior to my first cross-country season, I had spent over 8 months bedbound. It all started when I got my first pair of ice skates for Christmas of 2019. When I tore the wrapping paper off and opened that blue Jackson box I was over the moon. Figure skating had been something I wanted to do for a long while but I was never confident enough to start. Now I held it all in my hands and it felt like a new world opened up. I progressed the fastest in my learn-to-skate group. I had always been that way, a fast learner. Soon after that, I was offered private lessons by a coach at the rink and started moving even faster. Once a week my mother and I would make the two-hour drive to the city and I’d skate until the Zamboni honked me off the ice. Due to the distance, I didn’t get to skate as much as I’d have liked to but, I was always grateful for the time I did get. Then the pandemic hit! Like every non-essential business, the ice rink closed down and I was forced to take a couple of months off. Then in July 2021, a day like any other, I stepped on the ice thinking that I’d be able to do what I always did but that wasn’t to be. I took off on a combination jump, a flip-toe loop and ended up snapping my ankle nearly in half. The x-rays showed that an entire piece had broken off of my tibia and my fibula was in two. If I wanted to be able to stand for more than 30 minutes at a time, let alone skate again, I’d have to get a plate screwed onto my bones so they’d fuse properly again. This was the summer before the school year wherein we’d be able to go back to in-person classes and participate in sports again and I had planned to join my school's cross-country team. Through skating, I had finally gained confidence and proved to myself that I had the drive to do well in a new environment so I was excited to put myself out there. Now I was at risk of hardly being able to walk again. Those months I spent in my bed, despairing over what I believed to be lost forever, instilled within me a new passion. It was now my mission to get up and out there on those trails and on that ice again. I felt trapped and utterly alone so I made a change. Those first few practices of cross-season were nothing short of brutal. It was me and an ankle brace getting dropped on every run, going between walking and running, but I persevered. I saw all the subtle improvements along my journey, now I could run without stopping and an easy mile sub-10. I took my 5k time from 31 to 24 minutes over the course of those two months and loved every second I spent doing it. I had never known the feeling of utter freedom that came when the pain of racing kicked in and everything in my head went quiet. I got used to pushing my body and realized that nothing on the course could be worse than what I’d been through off of it. I learned to fuel my body properly, something I hadn’t been doing before. And most importantly, I learned that I could take the pain and finish strong.

In my opinion, nursing as a major and career is one of the most challenging yet rewarding choices. Throughout most of my high school career, I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I went off to college. Then, tragedy struck, as much as you can call a broken ankle a tragedy. It took me out of commission for a while, and for all that time I got to do a lot of thinking. My thoughts were mostly consumed with hospital visits, the ins and outs of surgery, and recovery from such a thing. I got to see nurses in action, doing the work that let me keep my leg and get back to doing all of the things that I had loved doing before snapping the bone almost in half. When I went in to get the staples holding my skin together taken out post-surgery, watching the nurse perform such a task sealed the deal in my mind, as morbid as that is. It was so interesting to watch the way she handled the forceps, carefully yet with a confidence that only comes with years of experience. I was awe-struck, that is until I almost fainted watching bits of metal being taken out of my skin. I went home that night with a lot to think about, it’s been a couple of years since my injury and over that time my resolve hasn’t wavered. I think what struck me most other than the skill and attention to detail was the ability to communicate. In a person's lifetime, they’ll visit a hospital or clinic give or take, 100 times, and every one of those times they’ll encounter a nurse. The way this nurse interacts with the patient, as well as their family, and cares for their space, will shape the way the average citizen will think of healthcare. I want to be the kind of nurse who helps someone vanquish their fear of the hospital, cheers them up after a tough break, and leaves them with a smile on their face. This career in my eyes is so admirable because it requires empathy for all. A love for humans so intrinsic that you make your life a series of repairing them so that they may continue living a life without pain or sadness. Nursing is a career in which you'll never stop learning, every day in a hospital you'll see a new condition, a new personality, and a new challenge to overcome. You'll realize your strengths and weaknesses, you'll continually improve as a person. I don’t doubt it will be the toughest thing I've ever done. However, with the strength of my heritage and those who’ve paved the path upon which I will walk, I know I can succeed. I see the ways in which my people are mistreated, our hospitals and clinics are underfunded and understaffed. I hope to obtain my degree, return to my homeland, and do my part in improving the healthcare systems of the Navajo Nation. Growing up among the dust and dirt I was taught to walk in beauty. Going into my adult years I want to embody this adage through the healthcare field. Here in the Navajo Nation, I see beauty everywhere from the moment I wake. We are a tough people, survivalists of many tragedies and hardships. We fought for our land, our language, and our heritage not too long ago, those elders are still living to this day. They’re still out there passing on the teachings that have kept our people alive for centuries in an unforgiving yet generous land.