Meet an American Indian Dentist, Advocate, and Role Model: Jessica Rickert
On February 23, 2021 the School of Dentistry’s DEI-MAC group hosted a virtual event, "Discover the Potawatomi pathfinder, Dr. Jessica A. Rickert, as she changed perceptions and exceeded expectations at the UM-SOD, 1975." This event motivated the museum to renew our correspondence with Dr. Rickert and to learn more about her accomplishments, goals, and honors.
Dr. Rickert completed her DDS at U-M’s School of Dentistry in 1975. She is featured in the Sindecuse Museum’s Student Reflections exhibit, which states she “was one of six women in her class of 140 and the first female American Indian dental student.”
In addition to practicing dentistry in the state of Michigan and giving presentations to a wide variety of audiences, Dr. Rickert is a founding member of the Society of American Indian Dentists. She’s also an author, creator of a multi-use, tooth-shaped pillow for children, was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 2009, and is profiled in the National Institutes of Health’s 2017 book, The Power of Role Models: A Collection of Native American Role Models.
While she is retired from private dental practice these days, Dr. Rickert is the Anishinaabeg Dental Outreach Specialist for Delta Dental Insurance of Michigan. The program reaches out to different communities with underserved populations around the state. They raise awareness of the benefits and availability of preventative dental services. In her role, Dr. Rickert will travel to all twelve Michigan reservations and to the Urban Indian Centers. (In the February Zoom event, she explained that reservation dentists may work in a clinic onsite, or that smaller reservations may partner with an independent dental office outside the reservation). Because these offices are kept busy with clinical work, they often don’t have outreach capabilities.
Photograph of Dr. Jessica Rickert by William Strait
Two other key points that Dr. Rickert shared about American Indians in the dental field:
Today there are about three hundred American Indian dentists practicing. For parity with the general population, there should be three thousand.
One contributing factor to the low number of American Indian dentists is a lack of role models. She noted that, “Never having seen an American Indian dentist, students do not imagine themselves as dentists.”
This last concept is explored further in the “Dentistry for Everyone” chapter of Rickert’s book, Exploring Careers in Dentistry. Here, she discusses the career paths of kids of color more broadly, saying, “If a minority youngster has never seen or even heard of a minority dentist, it is remote indeed that he or she would get the idea of becoming a dentist regardless of how well suited he or she might be for the career.”
Dr. Rickert says she was always interested in math and science as a young person, and a family doctor encouraged her to consider a career in medicine when she was twelve years old.
Anishinaabe Dental Outreach Program
The Anishinaabe Dental Outreach Program is an undertaking initiated by Dr. Rickert and sponsored by Delta Dental of Michigan to address the disparate levels of oral health care between the Michigan Indian population and the general population. Click on the link at left to learn more.
Uncovering The 'Unspoken Traumas' Of Native American Boarding Schools
Dr. Rickert's grandmother was among the hundreds of thousands of children forcibly removed from their families and moved out of state to "learn" how to not act like a Native. It's a testament that despite her family history, she became the woman she is today and proudly shows off her cultural background. Click on the link at left to learn more.