KU News Release

KU junior enters Glamour magazine’s Top 10 College Women competition

LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas junior with Native American heritage who once dropped out of high school and last year was named a Morris K. Udall Scholar hopes to be one of Glamour magazine’s Top 10 College Women for 2007.

Sarah Laurel Brokenleg is a member of the Rosebud Lakota Sioux Nation and is planning a career focusing on health care for Native Americans. She is the daughter of the Rev. Martin Brokenleg of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Karen Brokenleg and Jack Niemonen of Sioux Falls, S.D.

Competition winners each receive a $2,000 cash prize and a three-day trip to New York City. In addition, the winners are featured in the magazine, which is observing the 50th anniversary of the contest this year. The top 10 college women are selected by a panel of judges who evaluate applicants based on their leadership experience, personal involvement in the community and in campus affairs and their academic excellence. Winners will be announced in June.

At KU, Brokenleg is majoring in social welfare and plans to seek a master’s degree in social welfare and public health. Eventually, Brokenleg hopes to promote better health for Native Americans. She is interested in working to eliminate disparity in health care, particularly for the top three diseases treated by the Indian Health Service: heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

The loss of relatives to diabetes and watching others in her community suffer from amputations or kidney disease forged her personal interest in diabetes.

In addition to being named one of 80 national Udall scholars and a KU Woman of Distinction, Brokenleg has worked with researchers in social welfare and medicinal chemistry and at KU Medical Center on issues related to health among Native Americans. She also has been a tutor in math and chemistry.

Brokenleg attributes her academic success to allowing herself to grow at her own pace. At age 16 she dyed her hair blue, encountered harassment from school officials and watched her grades plummet. She dropped out of high school and at her parents’ request, completed a General Education Degree. She later attended Haskell Indian Nations University.

“One of my biggest accomplishments in life is entering college after dropping out of high school,” said Brokenleg. Nonetheless she values her decision to work and live on her own for eight years before entering college. “I would never take back that time, because I would never have been as focused as I am now.”

At Haskell, she found support from faculty and staff that encouraged her to complete an associate’s degree in natural sciences and consider transferring to KU.

“While I flourished at Haskell, I blossomed at KU,” Brokenleg said of her accomplishments.

Through the Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement Program, a joint Haskell-KU program funded by the National Institutes of Health, Brokenleg researched medicinal prairie plants used by indigenous peoples that may have applications for use in drugs to fight cancer or diabetes.

This spring, Brokenleg is working on an Udall foundation public service project aimed at teaching Native American youngsters about medicinal qualities of prairie plants. As project coordinator, she will work with children from area Indian centers to make seed balls, nuggets of humus, soil, clay and seeds of plants such as Echinacea, sometimes called purple coneflower.

“It’s a neat way to package seeds,” she said. “You toss them anywhere and they most likely will grow regardless of the person’s gardening experience.”

In the School of Social Welfare, Brokenleg is working with Megan O’Brien, project manager, to research methamphetamine use among Native Americans. Earlier she worked with Alice Lieberman, professor of social welfare, to assist in documenting the need for further training and education in the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.

Her research activities have included working with two KU Medical Center researchers implementing a diet and exercise program at an Indian health care facility as well as providing diabetes screening.

Brokenleg has served as president of the Oyate Club for Lakota, Nakota and Dakota students and volunteers with the Pelathe Center, a Native American community program in Lawrence.

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