As the first endowed professor and director of American Indian health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Public Health, Siobhan Wescott wears many hats and, often, a pale yellow flower behind her ear.
She was raised by a single mother, herself an academic, in a small cabin in Fairbanks, Alaska. But throughout her career, Wescott has found herself navigating prestigious, predominantly white institutions far different from her rural upbringing. As an Alaskan Athabaskan, she has often been the only Native American or American Indian person in the room — though these labels, overly broad and imposed by the government, are misnomers she is trying to fix.