EDITOR’S NOTE: Superiorland Yesterdays is prepared by the reference staff at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette.

30 years ago

L’ANSE — Keweenaw Bay Indians stand to benefit form a $1.2 billion health package for Native Americans being considered by Congress, according to Keweenaw Bay’s tribal clinic doctor. “We provide primary care but our budget is extremely limited,” said Dr. Bridget Reidy. “People do get denied care if it’s not considered an urgent priority. When the money gets low, we will only provide emergency, secondary care.” If passed by Congress, the health package aims to bring the health of Native Americans up to national standards by century’s end. Supporters said the legislation is the most important bill affecting Native Americans to come out of the 102nd Congress. “According to the Indian Health Service, Indian people still suffer the highest mortality rates in the nation,” said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., sponsor of the legislation. Reidy said because the Native American population is disproportionately poor, the health of Indians suffers. Miller said the legislation also addresses one of the biggest health care dilemmas facing Native Americans–the lack of medical professionals willing to work on remote and poor reservations. The legislation includes scholarship money to send Indian students to medical school and nursing college. It also offers incentives to encourage medical professionals to work in “hardship” locations. Reidy, who has been at the tribal clinic a year, is its only doctor. Unlike many others in the past, she plans on staying. “This clinic didn’t have a steady doctor for five years so care was patchy,” she said. “Most doctors expect to make more money.

60 years ago

MARQUETTE — The Wisconsin and Northern Michigan Air Mail Committee, representing Marquette, Escanaba, Menominee, Marinette, and several other cities, has wired Walter F. Brown, postmaster general, voicing their opposition to the granting of an air mail contract between Milwaukee and Detroit to the Kohler Aviation Corporation. The telegram says further: “We are individually and collectively unalterably opposed to the granting of an air mail contract across Lake Michigan at this time between Milwaukee and Detroit as it is felt that the service is not needed. If the department has funds available for extensions under existing economic conditions we urge, in preference, an extension from Green Bay to Marquette, which traverses a region not now served by air mail and costing only a fraction of what the Kohler lake line would cost.”