The Rapid City Indian Health Service Hospital formerly known as The Sioux San Hospital is an

Indian Health Service The Indian Health Service (IHS) is an operating division (OPDIV) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). IHS is responsible for providing direct medical and public health services to members of federally-recognized Nativ ...

hospital located in

Rapid City, South Dakota Rapid City ( lkt, link=no, Mni Lúzahaŋ Otȟúŋwahe; "Swift Water City") is the second most populous city in South Dakota and the county seat of Pennington County. Named after Rapid Creek, where the settlement developed, it is in western So ...

. It was built in 1898 as a

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. As they have existed for many centuries, and now exten ...

for Native Americans and turned into a sanitarium in 1933.

History

Boarding school

Located in the west side of

, it started out as a

known as the

Rapid City Indian School The Rapid City Indian School was located in Rapid City, South Dakota, and has since been converted into both an asylum and a hospital known as the Sioux San Hospital. The school opened 1898 as part of the federal government's off-reservation boa ...

in 1898. Members of the

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin (; Dakota language, Dakota: Help:IPA, /otʃʰeːtʰi ʃakoːwĩ/) are groups of Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribes and First Nations in Canada, First Nations peoples in North America. The ...

Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enroll ...

Shoshone The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ) are a Native American tribe with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshone: southern Idaho * Western Shoshone: Nevada, northern Utah * Goshute: western Utah, easter ...

Arapaho The Arapaho (; french: Arapahos, ) are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota. By the 1850s, Arapaho band ...

Crow A crow is a bird of the genus ''Corvus'', or more broadly a synonym for all of ''Corvus''. Crows are generally black in colour. The word "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species. The related term "raven" is not pinned scientifical ...

, and Flathead tribes were forced into the government institution to be taught how to assimilate into European American culture and language. Abuse, neglect, and death were prominent. Runaways were caught and dragged back to the school. It was closed in 1933.

Sanitarium

The building remained empty for many years until the outbreak of

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...

in the early 1900s. The building was then converted into a massive

hospital A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...

called the Sioux Sanitarium for Native American TB patients in 1939. These years were the worst in its history, as documented by

Madonna Swan Madonna Mary Swan-Abdalla (September 12, 1928 – 1993) was a Lakota people, Lakota woman. Born on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, USA, Madonna Swan prevailed over extreme difficulties including the Native American tuberculosi ...

, a

Lakota Lakota may refer to: * Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language, the language of the Lakota peoples Place names In the United States: * Lakota, Iowa * Lakota, North Dakota, seat of Nelson County * La ...

woman who was held at the sanitarium between 1944 and 1950. Unlike sanitaria for white people, which offered restorative environments and experimental treatments, Sioux San was a place where Native Americans went to die. The patients were rarely allowed outdoors, and were often served contaminated food. After the patenting of

streptomycin Streptomycin is an antibiotic medication used to treat a number of bacterial infections, including tuberculosis, ''Mycobacterium avium'' complex, endocarditis, brucellosis, ''Burkholderia'' infection, plague, tularemia, and rat bite fever. Fo ...

, the hospital closed in the 1960s.

Present state

The building remained empty for several years. The hospital still has numerous unmarked graves around the campus, not only of the TB patients, but also of Native American children. In 1966, after Native elders and community members agitated for better treaty-guaranteed health services, the building was reopened as an

clinic. In 2009, for the first time, the hospital temporarily cancelled all regular appointments due to an overload of

H1N1 In virology, influenza A virus subtype H1N1 (A/H1N1) is a subtype of influenza A virus. Major outbreaks of H1N1 strains in humans include the Spanish flu, the 1977 Russian flu pandemic and the 2009 swine flu pandemic. It is an orthomyxovirus ...

patients. In 2016, Congress appropriated $117 million to renovate the hospital, and plans were proceeding to demolish some of the historic buildings.

References

External links

Indian Health Service Sioux San (Black Hills Knowledge Network)
{{authority control School buildings completed in 1898 Tuberculosis sanatoria in the United States Hospitals in South Dakota Buildings and structures in Rapid City, South Dakota Hospitals established in 1933 1966 establishments in South Dakota Native American history of South Dakota Native American health