‘It’s a Big Deal for Some Folks to Even Walk in Our Door’

My grandfather was our tribal chief, my mom’s a tribal councilwoman, and my dad was a mechanic. I always understood our family values were about making a difference for our community.

For me, that meant being a dentist.

From kindergarten on, each time someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was always the same. (I even have a fuzzy memory of a Play-Doh dentist’s kit with silver clay for the amalgam fillings.) As corny as it sounds, dentistry felt like my destiny—and my duty. My community fostered this ambition in me because, when I was a kid, there were no dentists from my tribe.

In college, I went to Arizona for a pre-dental admissions workshop for American Indian students. As we sat in our talking circle, I was moved and validated by how much we all had in common: the all-too-familiar struggles as well as our shared goals, as a group of people striving, against the odds, to serve our tribal communities.

When I’m in our TUSDM clinics, I always try to remember we have patients who’ve lost trust in our profession; it's a big deal for some folks to even walk in our door. I think about empathy, too, when it comes to my own tribe. You never know what’s going on in people’s lives while they’re in your chair. For some, a routine cleaning may mean the choice between a trip to the dentist or working that day to put food on the table for their family. My job is to have compassion about what’s feasible for my patients and for my community.

Sometimes when I’m at home on break, a neighbor will come up to me in the grocery store and say, “I'm proud of you. Keep going—I can’t wait for you to come back and work on my teeth.” That encouragement reminds me that I'm not self-made. When I graduate, I’ll be only the second dentist ever from my tribe. But it’s not about me; I’ve got my entire community behind me, and I want to do all I can for them.

—Colby Dean is a third-year student at the School of Dental Medicine. He is also the founder of the Society of American Indian Dental Students, MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians.

Our Tufts is a series of personal stories shared by members of the Tufts community and featured on both Tufts Now and Instagram.