“Knowledge of every home": Health sovereignty, Native nurses’ labor, and the field nurse program in the early twentieth century

Modern Native American nations face serious health disparities and the struggle to exercise health sovereignty, or self-determination over healthcare. This dissertation examines the historical roots of such issues by studying the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs “field nurse” program as a window onto Indigenous health sovereignty in the early twentieth century. In 1924, the federal government began hiring public health or “field” nurses to deliver preventative healthcare and health education to Native communities. Federal policies often worked to limit Native patients’ choices, as policies of cultural assimilation and colonial violence intersected with the exclusionary trends of the public health nursing profession at the time. However, the field nurse program held the potential to expand healthcare access to Indigenous communities and facilitate health sovereignty. This was especially true in the cases of the very few field nurses who were Indigenous themselves. One such nurse was Lula Owl Gloyne, an Eastern Cherokee woman with an extensive career that included a position as a field nurse in her own community in the 1920s and 30s. The history of Gloyne and the Eastern Cherokee community, within the larger context of the field nurse program, illuminates links between the professionalization of nursing, public health, and Indigenous self-determination.