Nina Pierpont MD  PhD

For three years I was the pediatrician at Akwesasne, the St. Regis Mohawk reservation in upstate New York. When I left to take a position elsewhere, the tribe held a ceremony where they gave me a painting by a Mohawk artist. It hangs on my wall, bearing a small brass plaque that reads, "Niawen: You cared for our children."

I cherish that phrase. I offer this website in the spirit of that phrase. I am fundamentally a country doctor who enjoys medicine immensely—who enjoys her patients and their families. I have practiced among Yup'ik Eskimos in Alaska, by the Bering Sea; I have practiced (briefly) on the Navajo reservation and, as I say, among the Mohawk; and I have practiced for years, now, in the poorest county in New York State. And I have loved them all—all my patients. Perhaps because I had no children of my own, I loved them all (although I was a Wicked Stepmother to my husband's two children, now grown adults).

I have tried to keep the child alive in me; my young patients, who giggle with me as I carefully count their toes, keep my inner child alive. My young patients, unknown to them, heal me. Daily.