Janette Lorraine Cupp '79

General Surgeon, Gallup Indian Medical Center

I believe in parallel realities, parallel worlds," says Lori Cupp. The first and only Navajo woman surgeon, Cupp is paying back student loans by working at the Public Health Service Indian Hospital in Gallup, New Mexico. She considers herself a traditionally oriented Navajo as well as a high-tech doctor. Most Native Americans do not establish eye contact when talking, or ask personal questions, or touch each other habits considered essential to doctoring, and which she had to acquire. Cupp says she would like eventually to look into the benefits of traditional Indian medicine. Ten years from now she wants to be "working in a capacity to help Native Americans" and writing. And she would like to be a leader in the Indian Health Services someday. In the meantime, she dreams of "total Indian autonomy, the development of an all-Indian surgical team."