Margaret Moss, PhD, JD, RN, FAAN

Dr. Margaret P. Moss is a trailblazing figure in nursing, health policy, and Indigenous health advocacy. An enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation with Dakhóta lineage, she holds the distinction of being the first and only American Indian to possess both Nursing and Juris Doctorates. Currently serving as a Professor and the inaugural Associate Dean for Nursing and Health Policy at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, Dr. Moss brings 34 years of nursing experience and 23 years in academia to her role.

Throughout her career, Dr. Moss has made significant contributions to healthcare policy and Indigenous health. Her work includes serving as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow, contributing to the development of the National Alzheimer's Project Act, and authoring the first nursing textbook on American Indian health. Her expertise has been recognized globally, with positions at institutions like Yale University and the University of British Columbia. Recent accolades include being named to the inaugural Forbes 50 over 50 Impact List in 2021, induction into the National Academy of Medicine in 2023, and selection as a Fellow in the newly established Academy of Diversity Leaders in Nursing by the National Black Nurses Association.

Dr. Moss is recognized as a leader in health policy, legal issues, Indigenous health and health disparities and is asked to advise, program plan and speak on educational issues in these spaces.  Dr. Moss’ teaching philosophy is to:

Foster a teacher-student relationship where mutual respect is the basis from which quality learning is an end product.  In the short term, optimum learning environments and opportunities should be sought and provided.  In the long term, student transformation should take place through re-visioned implicit and explicit values, attitudes, motivations and acquired knowledge.  Inclusion of diversity of thought stemming from other disciplines, settings and perspectives from Indigenous and minority knowledge will add to these goals.

As a Hidatsa/Dakhóta woman, and a nursing and legal/policy scholar I am often called to leadership roles, and therefore have a blended academic record. As the only American Indian to have earned both nursing and juris doctorates my scholarly work product can be unique with traditional scholarship, professional contributions (often legal-focused), and importantly here, reconciling Indigenous knowledge and evidence in this work. While at UBC, my work had been 20% School of Nursing and 80% Director of the First Nation’s House of Learning, until my interim AVP Equity & Inclusion position from Dec 1, 2021 through July 1, 2022.  Through blending the of lenses of Indigenism, nursing, law and leadership, I have focused on Indigenous populations both urban and reservation-based; using varying methods such as focused ethnography, Geographical Information Systems and Science (GIS), survey, qualitative interview, and legal and policy analyses.  My phenomena of interest are: Indigenous health and aging; and the social, structural and political determinants of Indigenous health. Importantly, concepts including-inherent sovereignty, historical trauma, Indigenous-focused genocide/racism, Mitákuye Oyasin (we are all related), the Medicine Wheel and Seven Generations are imperative to understanding that health is not in isolation of these historical and contemporaneous contexts. 

The intersections among work, social inequality, and health disparities in multi-ethnic Registered nurses. NIH, 2023

Indigenous Campus Living Laboratory at xʷc̓ic̓əsəm Garden.
University of British Columbia, 2023

Migrant Integration in the mid-21st Century: Bridging Divides
The Canada First Research Excellence Fund

Developing a Distance Education System to Train Savvy Caregiver Program Interventionists
NIH, 2018-2022

Indigenous Undergraduate Research Experiences
Program for Undergraduate Research Experience (UBC PURE), 2019-2021

Behavioral Health Integration in a Native American Primary Care Clinic
United States Health Resources and Services Administration, 2017-2018

Partnering to Increase Access to Primary Care for Native Americans
United States Health Resources and Services Administration, 2016-2019