Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail (1903–1981) (Crow-Sioux) was the first Crow and one of the first Native Americans to graduate as a registered nurse in the United States.

Susie Walking Bear was born on January 27, 1903, on the Crow Indian Reservation near Pryor, Montana, to native parents.

Her mother, Kills the Enemy or Jane White Horse was Oglala Sioux and her father, Walking Bear, was Apsáalooke Crow.

[10] Lula Owl Gloyne of the Eastern Band Cherokee Indian tribe graduated from Chestnut Hill Hospital School of Nursing in Philadelphia in 1916 and passed the registration exam in Pennsylvania the same year.

[11] Graduating in September 1927,[5] she returned briefly to the Public Hospital in Greenfield[7] before taking a position in a private nursing facility in Oklahoma.

[3] For two years, she worked on the reservation to modernize the health services offered to her tribe and fight the forced sterilization of Native American women.

[12] Between 1930 and 1960, Yellowtail served as a consultant, traveling throughout the country and documenting problems in the Indian Health Service (IHS), like inadequate numbers of facilities,[13] inability of non-native nurses to speak with their patients from a culturally sensitive perspective or in their native language,[14] unsanitary living conditions, barriers to help from traditional healers,[3] health care only being available from IHS to Indians living on reservations[15] and many other concerns.

The group began a European tour in 1953, performing in Algeria, Denmark, England, Holland, Israel, Luxembourg, Morocco, and Turkey.

[18] Yellowtail and the other dancers toured in Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Spain and Sweden and spent an entire month in Paris performing to sold-out houses in 1954.