Cancer > Healing, Dreaming, a Calling

Healing, Dreaming, a Calling

By Christine Tully Photography by Paul Flessland

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Judith Kaur, M.D., remembers spending evenings outside in Missouri and Oklahoma with her grandmother, Ada Salmon. With their eyes closed, they listened to the sounds of nature and identified animals they heard. During the day, they’d study plants that Native Americans traditionally use for healing.

Grandmother Ada of Oklahoma, a member of the Choctaw Nation, always had something to do. She moved quickly managing a small farm, growing vegetables and flowers, and raising chickens.

And Grandmother Ada was in tune with nature, teaching young Judith how to hypnotize chickens to calm and quiet them. She even told her granddaughter that she was meant to be a healer when Dr. Kaur (COW’-er) was just 5 years old.

“Grandmother Ada taught me to use my senses — how to touch things, how to smell things, how to hear things, how to look at things,” says Dr. Kaur.

Grandmother Ada’s talents and encouragement later inspired Dr. Kaur to pursue a career as a physician. With a passion for helping others, especially Indigenous communities, Dr. Kaur later became one of the only practicing Native American oncologists in the United States.

“Grandmother Ada never had a formal education, but she was so observant and a natural scientist,” Dr. Kaur says. “It’s a gift she gave me, which has been invaluable as an oncologist. I felt called to this work.”

Path to Medicine

Dr. Kaur’s path to medicine took a winding road. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school, and although she loved science, it was the 1960s and women were rarely supported to pursue scientific careers. Instead, they often were encouraged to become teachers. And that’s what Dr. Kaur did.

After earning her bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a master’s degree in counseling, Dr. Kaur taught science to middle and high schoolers. After her first and only child was born and Dr. Kaur stopped teaching school, she spent her evenings reading with her young daughter and indulging in the latest issue of Scientific American.

Then, one night during dinner, Dr. Kaur’s husband, Alan, asked a question that changed the course of her career: “You had a chemistry professor who told you that you should have gone to medical school. You still love to learn. Would you want to go back to school?”

She realized the answer was yes.

At the time, most college students went straight to medical school after graduation. By now, Dr. Kaur was in her late 20s and well established in her life as a teacher and a parent. But the dream of becoming a physician had always lived at the back of her mind, bolstered by Grandmother Ada’s conviction in her calling. She decided to take a chance.

The medical schools Dr. Kaur reached out to expressed skepticism in her potential — how could they know she would still be a good student? Obstacle after obstacle arose. Although she had been at the top of her graduating class, she was told to take additional science courses to help prepare her for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). Others told her she was too old to become a physician. Then, a mistake in her scoring on the MCAT made it impossible for her to apply to medical school that year.

“It felt like maybe I wasn’t supposed to do this,” Dr. Kaur says.

But the Indians into Medicine program at the University of North Dakota didn’t think it was too late. She received a call asking to interview over the phone. She was accepted. Six weeks later, the Kaurs packed up their life and moved from Chicago to North Dakota, a state they had never even visited.

Addressing Health Disparities

Although the Kaurs uprooted their life so abruptly, they found a strong, supportive community in North Dakota. Dr. Kaur had already been committed to working with tribal populations in their previous home in Chicago, tutoring children at an urban Indian clinic, and she delved even further into helping Indigenous communities at Fort Yates Indian Health Service Hospital.

“I provided my first stitches to a person there. I delivered my first baby there,” she recalls. “I was working with tribes that weren’t my own tribe, but there was such a need I felt a calling at that point.”

Dr. Kaur then transferred to the University of Colorado Health Science Center, where she received her M.D. with honors. She decided to pursue oncology after working at an oncology research lab in the summer.

“The physicians I worked with kept telling me how cancer care was going to get better,” Dr. Kaur says. “They had that optimism and were constantly striving to improve things for patients with cancer. That drew me in.”

She was nearly 40 years old when she completed her internship, residency and a hematology-medical oncology fellowship at the University of Colorado Health Science Center. As a fellow, she was awarded the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s first-ever Young Investigator Award, which provided her funding to research monoclonal antibodies as a potential treatment for melanoma.

Dr. Kaur then returned to North Dakota, where she established cancer clinics, conducted cancer screenings and engaged in cancer research, with a significant focus on American Indian communities who often experience delays in diagnosis and treatment. She challenged the misconception that Indians were somehow immune to cancer, a disease often considered taboo within these communities.

From North Dakota, Dr. Kaur was recruited to Mayo Clinic after working with scientists on cancer clinical trials research. During her time at Mayo, Dr. Kaur worked on clinical trials for a triple-negative breast cancer vaccine and significantly expanded tribal access to palliative care by developing a course that trained more than 50 Indian Health Service providers in partnership with the National Cancer Institute and the Indian Health Service.

She also headed the Spirit of Eagles grant for more than 20 years, one of her more than 150 National Institutes of Health-funded projects and one of her proudest accomplishments, which engaged Native populations in culturally specific research, provided scholarships for students in medicine or biological sciences training, and advocated for improved cancer prevention and control.

Throughout her career, Dr. Kaur also mentored hundreds of minority students.

She dedicated her career to advancing care for Native Americans, leading the national conversation to recognize cancer as a major unaddressed health disparity in Indigenous communities.

“It really wasn’t even my intention to become an oncologist,” Dr. Kaur says. “But one thing led to another, and it was just right.”

Giving Back

After 29 years of service at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Kaur recently became an emeritus staff member — and she and Alan continue to give back to their communities.

“I would not have been able to go through school without the support of philanthropy along the way,” she says. “Alan’s and my needs are small, but our desires for access to educational opportunities for other motivated students are great.”

The Kaurs support causes and organizations that inspire them, such as scholarship funds at their respective alma maters and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. They recently made a significant planned gift commitment to Mayo Clinic to endow a named professorship in cancer prevention and control.

As she enters a new chapter in her life, Dr. Kaur has no plans to slow down professionally. She continues to attend and present at scientific meetings, as well as engage in research. But she also plans to make time for other activities, such as gardening, reading and spending time with her family. Her favorite project this past summer was raising monarch butterflies.

She is grateful for her grandmother’s wisdom and her husband’s encouragement to take a chance on becoming a physician.

“I think I have my grandmother’s genes,” she says, laughing. “I don’t stop walking fast.”