Jennie R. Joe

Jennie R. Joe (born 1941) is an American academic, medical anthropologist, and fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Initially trained as a nurse, she was one of the health clinic workers during Occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. She is a professor in the Departments of Family and Community Medicine and American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. Joe was one of the inaugural board members for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and serves on the board of the Urban Indian Health Commission.

She graduated from the University of New Mexico as a public health nurse in 1964 and having been commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy Nurse Corps, completed her training in Newport, Rhode Island. After her graduation, Joe worked for the Indian Health Service, spending three years in northern New Mexico before transferring to North Dakota. Wanting to continue her education, Joe moved to California and completed her master’s degree in public health at the University of California, Berkeley. Joe, and Dorothy Lonewolf Miller (Blackfoot) both assisted nurse Stella Leach (Colville-Oglala Lakota), who established the health clinic on Alcatraz Island during the 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz. In 1971, she was one of the women involved in the formation of the National Indian Women’s Action Corps, an empowerment organization for Native American women.

After completing a second master’s degree from UC Berkeley, in anthropology, Joe consulted with the California State Health Department on Indian health. While working at the California Department of Health, she assisted in founding the first program to address child abuse and neglect in the urban Indian community, which resulted in the establishment of the Urban Indian Child Resource Center of Oakland. In 1976, working part-time, Joe went on to study for her PhD in medical anthropology at UC Berkeley. In 1976, working part-time, Joe went on to study for her PhD in medical anthropology at UC Berkeley. Jennie Joe Noswood completed her dissertation on Navajo children with disabilities and was the first Navajo to earn a doctorate from UC Berkeley. Graduating in 1980, she worked as a research associate for the Institute for Scientific Analysis, focusing on American Indian issues. Joe then became an associate professor at University of California, Los Angeles in the Anthropology and American Indian Studies department. In 1986, Joe took a leave of absence from UCLA to assist the University of Arizona in developing a curriculum on disabilities and rehabilitation for indigenous people. She was involved in the research project, considered a landmark investigation into the needs of Native Americans, for the United States Department of Education. By the time the report, A Study of the Special Problems and Needs of American Indians with Handicaps Both on and off the Reservation, was completed in 1987, she had been hired as the co-director of the Native American Research and Training Center at the University of Arizona. By 1990, Joe was teaching as an associate professor and sole director of the Research and Training Center for the university. That year she was selected by the Smithsonian Institution to serve as one of 12 members on the inaugural board of the National Museum of the American Indian, which was to be constructed.

In addition to her work in the Family and Community Medicine Department, Joe teaches in the faculty of American Indian Studies and is an elected fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology. She serves on the board of the Urban Indian Health Commission, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Indian Health Commission of Seattle.

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