These children never had the chances we had. We have had some hard upbringings among us, but we have managed to exist. The schools they were sent to were never meant to give them careers, they were meant to break them and to teach them menial jobs. “Kill the Indian and save the man.”
We as physicians and medical students have far exceeded any hopes these children had. They were not meant to be and we were not meant to be. Professionals with deep traditional values are exactly what those schools were trying to prevent.
Residential Redemption. We have an opportunity to redeem. Every child we care for, every interaction with parents or grandparents binds us together and makes us stronger.
In the Spirit of Medicine features the essays of Dr. Arne Vainio, an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and a family practice doctor on the Fond Du Lac reservation in Cloquet.
