Gerianne Pfeiffer Native American Scholarship

Being Navajo is who I am. It is difficult to separate the impact of being Native American from just being me because my culture is ingrained within me. My cultural upbringing impacts my thoughts, my actions and the way I see the world. It opens my eyes to viewing the discrepancies that I experience through a lens of change and opens my thoughts to how I can impact of change for my people. I have lived in many places, both on and off the reservation, but always among Native People such as the Pueblos of Northern New Mexico. This has allowed me to see how vastly different the world moves outside the bubble of our reservation home. The discrepancies were most apparent in the healthcare offered to those in the city versus the rural areas. When I spent a period of time in and out of the city hospital recovering from injury, I experienced the differences first hand and was able to grasp the depth and width of this gap. The level of service available in the city versus my small rural reservation community was significant. When I moved to college in Wisconsin, the difference was even more glaring in cities larger than Albuquerque and in a state with more financial security than New Mexico. The struggle Native people face daily is obvious. The most apparent to me is in educational opportunities and healthcare. Death and disease are rampant on the reservation due to the severe lack of funding, lack of medical resources, and geographical barriers. Along with that, less than 0.4% of all nurses in the United States are Native American, meaning that cultural and language barriers exist for our elders and those raised traditionally. This is why I pursue nursing; I want to do my part in relieving these burdens. I want to demonstrate to nursing schools outside my home state that Native nurses are worth supporting and reaching out to. I also want to be a role model for other young people in my community who may dream of pursuing a medical career. This is the point at which I became even further emboldened in my passion for nursing. Upon graduation, my career goals are to return to Navajoland and provide much needed nursing care to my people. With this scholarship's help, I can leave home for my education and return to my rural Navajo community with that knowledge. My passion for school also extends to my sport, which I would not be able to participate in while completing such a rigorous curriculum without access to a D3 institution of which there are none in my home state. I have worked hard in school my whole life, and with assistance, I can continue my dream of contributing to healthcare on the reservation. At my college, the Indigenous population is nearly non-existent. The Native American Student Association club has only two members. It’s lonely and isolating to be half of a whole and have no real space you can connect with people who understand what it’s like to grow up Indigenous: we were not offered AP classes or counseling; we weren’t even given science classes. As a result, it’s a constant fight just to set myself up for the successes that many non-Native kids have had the opportunity to experience in their schooling. I plan to use my experience as a Native woman in nursing school, athletics, and the world off the reservation to empower other aspiring nurses from the Navajo Nation, and to connect with the communities in which I will work.