She also complicates easy moral judgments.

Susan sometimes supported policies and language associated with assimilation.

That cannot be erased.

At the same time, she spent her life trying to protect Omaha health, land, families, and political welfare.

People are not ideological diagrams.

They make choices inside the possibilities available to them.

Susan believed education and professional training could help her people survive an American system that was not going away.

Her siblings made similar calculations in law, writing, and scholarship.

The results changed history.

Standing Bear’s interpreter was a La Flesche.