Dr. Lillie Rosa Minoka-Hill was the second Indigenous woman in the United States to hold an M.D. degree. After graduating from the Grahame Institute, a Quaker school for girls, she enrolled at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. After earning her medical degree in 1899, she interned at the Woman’s Clinic, set up her own private practice, and worked at the Lincoln Institute where she treated Indigenous children. In 1905, she married and moved to Wisconsin, where she treated people from the local Oneida reservation. Because she did not have a Wisconsin medical license, she could not charge money for her service or prescribe medication, but worked with other doctors to serve her patients. The Oneida community honored her selfless service with a monument established in her name, with an inscription reading “I was sick and you visited me.”
Dr. Lillie Rosa Minoka-Hill, PhD
Physician