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By Renée St. Martin Wizeman
Within the beauty of the Blackfeet
Reservation beats the rhythm of home for
many of its people, as Dr. Mary DesRosier
can attest.
Born and raised in Browning, Dr. Mary
is the first female Blackfeet physician, as
well as the first to return to the reservation
and practice medicine. On Oct. 1, the
Montana WWAMI Medical Education
Program named her the 2010 recipient of
the George Saari Humanitarian Award. It
is for a physician who has made a significant
humanitarian contribution to medicine
and community, and who best exemplifies
the humanitarianism and professionalism
of the late Dr. George Saari of
Bozeman.
Dr. Mary’s parents raised her in the
Catholic faith and her family, particularly
grandparents, taught her the traditional
Indian ways. Medicine is in her blood. Her
paternal grandfather operated the first
drugstore in Browning, and her maternal
great-grandmother was a midwife and
herbalist in the Heart Butte area.
Dr. Mary attended Browning schools
from kindergarten through high school,
graduating 13th in her class in 1975. For
the next 20 years, pursuit of education put
miles between her and Browning, but she
never went longer than eight months without
a visit home.
Formed in Faith, Finds Her Way
Father Jack Murray was co-pastor of
Little Flower Parish in Browning during
Dr. Mary’s high school years. She was one
of three students who skied with him
often, and she names Father Murray, along
with her father, mother and maternal
grandmother, as a spiritual mentor.
During high school she became
involved with the Indians into Medicine
program through the University of North
Dakota-Grand Forks, where she attended
summer school and received college credits.
Dr. Mary recalled a particularly formative
moment during a 1973 summer chemistry
class, when the instructor said a
human embryo was biochemically identical
to a human out of the womb. “It was
wonderful to hear a physician speak so
openly, in a public school, about how
important life is, how abortion is an awful
thing,” Dr. Mary told The Montana Catholic.
Her early college years were a struggle.
“I came out of high school in the top 13,
and I went to college and I flunked everything,”
she said.
After two years in North Dakota, she
missed her home–the mountains, the wind
and her family–and left UND for
Browning. She worked in the hospital laboratory
there, and met an Indian physician
who subsequently got her involved in a
summer program at Harvard
University. After two summers
at Harvard, she transferred
to the University of
Washington, finishing six
years later with a bachelor’s
degree in microbiology.
Although her time in
Washington was academically
productive, it also involved
movement away from the
Church.
“I got lost, really. And
after I got my bachelor’s
degree, I was never going to go to school
again,” she said, laughing at how much
things subsequently changed. At North
Seattle Community College she pursued a
community health advocate certificate
through an 11-month program. Its recurring
schedule required a week of classroom
work in Seattle, followed by three
weeks at the Browning hospital, where she
was to apply what she had learned in class.
After completing the certificate program,
she returned to UND, having reapplied for
Indians into Medicine, and took graduatelevel
courses in biochemistry, physiology
and anatomy. With a 4.0 grade average in
the courses eclipsing her poor undergraduate
performance, she won admission to the
UND School of Medicine.
Cuursillo Deepens Her Faith
In the midst of her academic journey,
Dr. Mary underwent a spiritual journey.
She found herself drawn back into the
Church and in the summer of 1985,
between her first and second years of medical
school, she made a Cursillo in Heart
Butte. The experience “completely
changed my life,” she said.
She was drawn to it through several
people, including her mother, who had
made a Cursillo in Shelby. Dr. Mary drove
there from Seattle to attend the closing
Mass.
“That Mass was really something, and
my mom said ‘Oh, Mary, you have to
make a Cursillo,’ and I said I would, without
really even knowing what it was,” she
said.
Elements of her childhood also influenced
her Cursillo interest: the strong
emphasis on family and time spent together
in nature, her grandmother’s Indian
teachings. They established the foundation
for enduring awe at God’s greatness and
omnipresence, Dr. Mary said.
As a child, she said, “We learned that
Creator is out there, that God is everywhere
in nature. I was immersed in that when I
was little. I remember going out to the lakeshore
with my grandmother to watch the sunrise, in
complete silence.” That reverent silence
became part of her practice as a physician.
“When I was in surgery
I was really super
quiet, and I think it’s
because I was in awe of
that life that was there,”
she said. “It is so powerfully
personal. I
remember looking at
cells in the microscope,
and the pathology
instructor talking about
what happens at the
cellular level, or with
embryology, they can
tell you what happens,
but can’t really explain
the spark. God is everywhere–he’s in the
wind, in the mountains, everywhere on
Earth, and when we go inside ourselves,
God is in that spark, in that brain cell, that
makes the thought move…God is that, he
is that spark. And that’s why I love being a
doctor.”
The birth of her first child, Emma, on
the first day of her third year of medical
school, was another incredible experience
for Dr. Mary. She recalled telling her husband,
John Padgett, two things after holding
Emma: “I’m never drinking again
because I don’t want her to learn that from
me. And I want 10 by the time I’m 40.”
She was 30 at the time.
By age 43, she had given birth to six
more children: Gerard, Eli, Katie, Cecilia,
Rebecca and Martha. Her husband also has
two sons from a previous relationship, one
of whom died in a traffic accident before
she and John were dating. The family’s
youngest child, Dakota, was adopted as an
infant. Next year he will be a fourth-grader
at De La Salle Blackfeet School, where
he’ll join older sisters Rebecca and
Martha, now students.
‘Jesus Pulling Me Along'
“I think I was drawn to do what I do by
God,” Dr. Mary said. “I think it’s something
Jesus wanted me to do. Even with
my college GPA, and various times of having
my back to the wall, I think it was
Jesus pulling me along all those years.”
After completing residency in family
medicine at UND-Minot in 1992, Dr. Mary
served as a medical officer in family medicine
at the Crow Agency Indian Health
Service from 1992-95.
Apprehensive on her first day there, her
Cursillo experience buoyed her. “There
was an Indian guy
standing there–he
shook my hand and
then hugged me and
said ‘de colores.’ He
had seen my
Cursillo cross,” she
said. As Dr. Mary
learned later, the
man and his
wife–who would
become good
friends of the family–
were involved
with Cursillo at
Crow Agency.
In 1995, she
moved to Heart
Butte to work at the
Heart Butte Clinic.
“The day I started
working was the
same day I’d finished the Cursillo 10 years
earlier (also) in Heart Butte,” she said. For
nearly nine years, Dr. Mary was the only
doctor in Heart Butte, treating up to 25
patients a day, assisted by a licensed practical
nurse, an office manager and a pharmacist.
During this time, she also worked
one day a week in the emergency room at
Blackfeet Community Hospital in
Browning.
In Heart Butte, Dr. Mary was adopted
in the Indian way by “a wonderful woman:
Mary Running Crane, who had 10 kids.”
Her son, Deacon Ron Running Crane, has
become a spiritual teacher and mentor for
Dr. Mary’s family and is Dakota’s godfather.
Mary Runing Crane passed away
about 1½ years ago, but Dr. Mary and her
adopted brothers and sisters remain close.
Dr. Mary’s parents and biological siblings
still live in the Browning area.
She credits daughter Cecilia, now 15,
with evangelizing her and other family
members into fuller life in the Church.
Cecilia was in the third grade when her
influence emerged. Over the course of six
months, the entire family began attending
Mass regularly. During the past two years,
Cecilia has been a Catholic Youth
Coalition board member and, with her
mother, participated in the Justice
Outreach Project on the Blackfeet
Reservation. The diocesan Office of Youth
and Young Adult Ministry sponsored the
project.
In 2003, Dr. Mary transferred to fulltime
work in Browning. She continues to
practice family medicine there.
Prayer, Medicine and Healing
A couple of years ago, she attended a
diocesan Holy Spirit Conference, by herself.
“I still don’t know if I’m really a
charismatic Catholic, but I am in love with
the Holy Spirit,” she said. “Whether it’s a
junior high youth rally,
CYC Convention,
Holy Spirit Conference,
Cursillo or
Search, I just seek
those things out.” She
has assisted with
Search and Cursillo in
Browning, and last
spring she graduated
from the two-year Program of Formation
for Lay Ministers. She calls Little Flower
Parish’s pastor, Father Ed Kohler, a “wonderful,
Holy Spirit-filled priest.” Wearing
her traditional Blackfeet dress, she carried
the Oil of the Sick during this year’s
Chrism Mass at the Cathedral of St.
Helena. As a physician, she has been present
many times when the sick were anointed
with oil blessed by the bishop during
the annual Chrism Mass.
“There are just so many people working
every day for God, for Jesus,” she said.
“The Chaplet of Divine Mercy is a powerful
prayer for a lot of us. Every Thursday
evening there’s adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament for two hours (at Little Flower
Parish) and the Chaplet is part of that.”
“I pray quietly every morning,” she
said. She also prays the rosary daily with
her children on the way to school, and
prays the Chaplet of Divine Mercy two to
three times a day. She attends daily Mass
as frequently as possible. “When I am able
to receive the Eucharist on any given day
it is a great day!” she said.
Dr. Mary said that through membership
in the Catholic Medical Association, she
has learned much about the scientific
aspects of many of today’s most morally
challenging issues, including stem cell
research. CMA presentations
have included
the higher treatment
success rate associated
with adult, rather
than embryonic, stem
cells, she said.
During the interview,
she also
addressed the life issues
of abortion and physician-assisted suicide.
“Abortion goes against us as women,
as life givers,” she said. “Society today
sometimes convinces women to think otherwise
about who they truly are, in a God
sense. I don’t know of very many Indian
women who have had abortions. There
were only 1,200 Blackfeet in the late
1800s, and today there are 12,000. If you
are going to remain a culture, you cannot
abort your babies. The woman as life giver
is a very sacred thing in our society.
“There’s a saying that there’s no such
thing as an orphan in Indian Country. If
mom isn’t available, then grandma is, or
great-grandma or auntie. The Blackfeet
word for mother is the same as aunt, as
grandma…it’s all the same word,” she
said.
“Physician-assisted suicide is just murder.
I understand pain and suffering in
human beings, and I can understand how
people can come to that,” she said. “But
I’ve also had some experiences with
patients teaching me what it is to walk
with Christ through that suffering. Without
the cross of Christ, our suffering is just
pain and suffering. If we can tie it to the
cross of Christ, it becomes redemptive to
us as humans.”
Last October, a fire destroyed the
DesRosier-Padgett family’s home in the
Heart Butte area.
“It was very hard–we lost everything,”
Dr. Mary said. “But the people of
Browning and the reservation were amazing.
They gave our family so much love.
We ended up not needing anything for the
house we moved into. And people from all
over western Montana–a lot of people in
the diocese–gave tons.
“I would like to thank everyone who
contributed, whether in material goods,
food or prayers. We will be forever indebted.”
When Dr. Mary returned to the
Blackfeet Reservation in 1995, she
received a Blackfeet name, Medicine
Victory Woman, three words that capture
the essence of a Catholic woman whose
life and work reflect deep love of God and
a desire to share that love with others
through her healing hands.
“I just love people, and I love my job,”
Dr. Mary said. “I think those are gifts from
the Holy Spirit.”
Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 10, October 15, 2010.
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