Hi,

       My name is Angie, I have a question.......I am a nursing student and have found a loan repayment program if you sign a contract to work on an indian reservation for 2 years and you can recieve up to $40,000.00 in loan repayment. I am curious to know if anyone has done this or heard positives or negatives...

Thank you,

Angie in Ohio

Most reservations are extremely isolated and you have to travel miles to go shopping, grocery or otherwise.  On many reservations Meth is king, alcoholism not far behind.  There are gang problems too, on many reservations.  I did a 13 week travel assignment in Fort Defiance, Az.  I had a great time, but even though I made lots of friends, the isolation began to really bother me. 

However, you will experience a culturally rich environment.  Learn many things you never had any idea about.  Experience western medicine combined with native american medicine.  Traditional native american healers (shamans, star gazers, etc) are all welcome within the hospitals as are the rituals and traditions.

I would enocourage you to talk with some elders and a medicine man on one of your local rez's, if you can get connected. They can share a wealth of traditional healing therapies, commonly used among their people, and you will get an idea of the challenge you will be up against, in order to provide them with "modern medical treatment". I belong to a, predominantly, native american church, and am amazed at the lack of interest in preserving their health, through modifying long-standing, ethical/spiritual traditions to healthier options. To our Lakota elders, frybread and wojapi are considered to be the bread of life, sure to cure the ills that they are, actually, contributing to. My college major was in Nutrition/Food Science- Dietetics, before I took the vocational direction of nursing, but I am only whispering in the wind, when I recommend that they may want to for-go fried foods and begin a work-out routine, in order to alleviate the scourge of diabetes,which runs rampant. It seems that they believe they may not meet the Great Spirit, if they were to terminate frequent ingestion of this ethnic manna, which is clogging their arteries and elevating their blood sugar toward hyperglycemia, with each bite. We may or even should not change ethical traditions, but there is a great need for nurses to understand the culture, in order to offer proven courses to extend the lives and happiness of our beloved elders, for as long as possible.