So she built relationships as carefully as she prescribed medicine.

That work is difficult to photograph.

There is no dramatic image of trust accumulating over years.

Yet without it, the rest of her career becomes hard to explain.

People kept calling her.

They asked for help beyond medicine.

They trusted her with family problems, money questions, and land concerns.

The physician had become something larger: a community institution before she ever built a physical one.

The Federal Government’s Contradictions Followed Her Into Medicine

Susan’s career also exposed a contradiction at the center of federal Indian policy.