“A Warrior of the People” is Susan La Flesche’s story, a Native American woman from the Omaha tribe who became the first Native American doctor. Beyond that, it shows the historical context surrounding her. The author flows between one woman’s story and the overall story of colonisation of the Native Americans with grace.

We learn about the Omaha culture and the change that comes with the white men, we learn about the difficulty of people to stand on their own when the government keeps putting limits to what they can do. Most of all, we learn about Susan La Flesche’s family, who are all impressive. Her father was the chief of the tribe, and her siblings became known figures at that time. Her story is one of education and the doors it can open when given the chance. Although there are a lot of people who helped Dr. La Flesche get where she was, what stood out to me was the women who fought tooth and nail for her to become a doctor.

The constant historical context is needed to remember how impressive Susan La Flesche is. She was a Native American woman who couldn’t vote and wasn’t allowed citizenship in her own country. Her gender made people doubt her skills as a doctor, and yet she surpassed all of this and made reality of her dream of teaching and healing her people.

Susan’s character is at the core of all her accomplishments. She’s an ambitious and passionate woman—both about health, but also about her people’s rights. Her journey becomes even more admirable as we see all the quests she takes on, such as helping people with government related issues, translating from Omaha to English and reversely, fighting against alcohol on the reservation and prioritizing the prevention of sickness. She doesn’t consider herself extraordinary, she just sees herself as someone whose purpose is to serve her people.

There’s a contradictory line that is thoroughly explored, that of the native people’s resistance to losing their culture. Susan’s education tried to convince the Native Americans to leave their traditions behind, including banning the use of their language on school grounds and trespassing traditions. She never lets them succeed and even honors her tribe in her graduation speech, showing that education and roots can co-exist.

Despite everything, it also shows the consequences of being the first. Dr. La Flesche had no one else to rely on, to counsel or to guide her regarding her profession. She had a tremendous amount of responsibility on her shoulders, which caught up with her. She battled chronic illness for most of her life, yet she never relented. Her name should be known in history, but her story is rarely told. Although I’ve had some issues with the repetition and chronology of this book, it’s a primordial read to understand who Susan La Flesche was and how she paved the way for her people.

This was such an incredible collection of essays. The author has a unique voice and her writing made me long for more. It was emotional to see everything that Indigenous people have to live with still, and how oppression can take more subtle paths that are nonetheless hurtful. It was particularly interesting for me to read about Lapointe’s relationship to veganism as we often hear about Indigenous perspectives missing from this conversation. With each essay, I kept thinking how grateful I am I stumbled upon this collection. There was a lot of knowledge missing on my part and I’m glad that I know more now.

Nothing really worked for me in this story. I didn’t understand why the characters were together to begin with. They had a young romance and then they meet again at a wedding ten years later, then jump straight into dating without knowing anything that happened in between. It just wasn’t believable.

Then it was how the characters also felt surface-level, with Kit’s whole thing being that she’s performing the “manic pixie dream girl” role to please everyone. She also wants the perfect rom-com ending which is the main reason why she couldn’t accept her sexuality? I understand the author put some of her own lived experience in here but Kit’s reasoning didn’t feel developed or complex—she has a supportive family, a queer best friend and she lives in LA, I’m failing to see why she would feel that way just because she might get her romcom ending with a woman.

Julia was more interesting to read, but she often repeated how her toxic ex, Piper, manipulated her into being another person. It was understandable that she would be hung up on that, but there’s not much else about Julia and we don’t truly go into the details of who she was before and how this changed her. We only talk about how her appearance changed because of Piper.

There is a huge conversation in here about being in a relationship with someone who is in the closet, and the author did a pretty decent job portraying how difficult it is to be on either side of that situation.

Now, when it comes to the plot… I never thought a wedding could be this boring. There’s only a few events and scenes that unfurl, with each one taking so many chapters. The actual wedding isn’t that long, which I thought was odd. The narrative and character development would’ve benefitted from more heartfelt moments between Kit and Julia. The lack of plot wasn’t helped by the writing, which also felt superficial.

This one wasn’t for me, but it’s fine for anyone that wants a light-hearted story centered around coming out.

There’s such an earnestness that comes through these pages that it blew me away. The experience of being a woman back then frustrated me, but what frustrates me even more is that some women still get treated this way. We deserve to be our own independent person, with our wants and desires. This book expresses the difficulty of waking up from the conditioning that patriarchy has put on us since the beginning of time, and it is deliciously satisfying.