When Ethan Greyhorse Hunter tore both his ACL and meniscus playing high school football during his freshman year, he and his family had to drive 45 minutes from where they lived on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation to get the imaging done.
The reservation had a designated health clinic from the Indian Health Service, a federal agency that provides healthcare to members of federally recognized Native American tribes and Alaska Native people. While some primary care services are offered at the clinics, specialists are much more difficult to access, and in the case of those living on the Pyramid Lake reservation, imaging services required a drive to the Reno-Sparks Tribal Health Center.
“A lot of reservations are different,” Hunter said. “Some are a lot richer, and some are really poor. Ours is a smaller town of about 1,000 people. No restaurants, and our entire economy comes from fishing and wildlife.”
Hunter’s rehab took a year to complete, but the experience set in motion a new-found appreciation for physical therapy and a desire to bring those services to others living on reservations.
“I volunteered at a physical therapy clinic to help people from my reservation, and I met a lot of tribal members doing it. It created a big sense of community,” he said. “We’d get to talking about each other’s families, and it made the experience easier.”
Hunter is one of 1,240 UNLV students who identify as American Indian or Alaska Native. He is also one of three students from the Northern Nevada Paiute Tribe enrolled in the Department of Physical Therapy, housed within UNLV’s School of Integrated Health Sciences.
Individuals who identify as American Indian or Alaskan Native comprise just 0.14% of physical therapists in the U.S relative to the overall population, according to a 2023 report from the American Physical Therapy Association,
Zachery Burns, a first-year student in the physical therapy department, focused on the lack of Native American representation among physical therapists as part of his essay when applying to UNLV.
“The number of American Indians in physical therapy is too low, and even though I didn’t grow up on a reservation, I have Native blood in me,” Burns said. “I want to be able to give back to my people.”
Burns was raised in Fernley, a rural town 30 miles east of Reno, but would make the hour-long drive each month with his family to visit his grandparents on the Walker River Paiute Reservation in Schurz, Nevada.
When Burns’ mom was younger and living in Schurz, their family had to drive nearly two hours to Reno for healthcare. Physical therapy, which often requires multiple visits to address an issue, was out of the question, since there wasn’t a physical therapist within 90 miles.
Burns and Hunter grew up not far from one another and played basketball together in high school. Burns was a three-sport athlete and eventually played football at Eastern Oregon University before coming to UNLV to pursue his dream as a future physical therapist.
“I found myself in physical therapy quite a bit as an athlete, but I don’t think working with athletes is really what I want to do,” he said. “I’ve found that helping the older populations and the people who support their families get back to work has brought me more fulfillment as opposed to working with athletes.
"I worked as a physical therapist aide before coming to UNLV, and you see people come in who can’t play with their kids or their grandkids anymore, and they can’t do the things that they’ve always loved to do. Those are the people I want to work with.”
Quintin Allen, a first-year physical therapy student at UNLV, was raised by his grandmother, who was 75% Native American, in Dayton, located 20 minutes outside of Carson City.
Each summer, he would stay with his aunt who lived on the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Reservation, about an hour from Dayton.
“I would do summer recreation clubs on the reservation and that’s where I started hanging out with more Native kids,” he recalled. “Without my aunt, I wouldn’t have had that connection to my Native side. She helped me learn the Paiute language and taught me more about where I came from.”
During these formative years, Allen discovered that he was different from most people he interacted with on a daily basis.
“As a kid, you don’t really pay attention to that. You don’t think about those differences but growing up, I always felt out of place in a way. I was the only brown kid in the whole school until probably the 4th or 5th grade,” he recalled. “I realized that I was different and I was treated differently. Not bad, but I didn’t get as much attention as the white kids.”
Allen never felt accepted by the majority-white populations of the small towns where he went to school nor by the kids on the reservation during the summers.
“It wasn’t until I got to college that I really understood that I had to look at myself to identify what I deemed was most important,” he said.
After high school, Allen left Northern Nevada to attend Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas. At Haskell, he met Native American students from tribes across the region; another opportunity that allowed him to gain a deeper understanding of his Native side.
While attending Haskell, Allen developed patellar tendinopathy, a painful condition that causes inflammation in the patellar tendon, in both of his knees. Allen said the pain developed after he overworked his leg muscles without giving them the proper time to rest.
“I’ve always had a coach’s mentality, and I like to be that person for people who need it,” Allen said. “When I got hurt, I lost my identity. And when I lost that, I became isolated and it made me wonder what I wanted to do with my life and who I wanted to be. Physical therapy fit in a lot with my coach’s mentality as a person. It showed me that it was something I could do.”
All three students have since formed a strong connection since joining UNLV.
“Since there isn’t a strong representation of Native American physical therapists in our field, it is incredible to have three Paiute students in our program at the same time,” said Merrill Landers, chair of UNLV’s department of Physical Therapy. “UNLV has a great culture of diversity and I would like to think that our program also does a good job creating a sense of belonging and inclusion.
"While we certainly have room for improvement, having students from diverse backgrounds, like Zach, Quintin, and Ethan, allows the faculty and students in the program to grow and learn from each other.”
Hunter, Allen, and Burns all noted that they don’t feel as strong of a Native presence in Southern Nevada as they did while growing up in Northern Nevada, which makes being a part of the same program that more special.
“Coming to Las Vegas was definitely a culture shock,” Burns said. “Rural Nevada is a completely different world. There are just so many people down here and I don’t think I’d even met another Native person until I came to UNLV. I think it’s really cool to have all three of us here.”
Hunter appreciates the opportunities to connect with his fellow Native American students on campus. He participated in UNLV’s "Powwow for the Planet" in April, an event that champions cultural preservation and leadership development among Native youth, advocacy for environmental justice, and the protection of Indigenous sacred places in Nevada.
The experience brought back memories when he learned how to perfect the Northern Nevada Paiute hunting dances growing up on the Pyramid Lake reservation.
“The big thing about a powwow is just going out there and dancing with the drum... having a good time,” he said with a smile.
After graduation, Hunter hopes to open his own clinic on a reservation so people can receive the care significantly closer to home.
As a basketball enthusiast, Allen has found himself drawn to working in the world of athletics, but those summers spent on the reservation under the care of his aunt has left him wanting to serve his people as well.
“Growing up and seeing how my aunt impacted the lives of so many kids, I feel indebted to her for the difference she made,” Allen said. “She instilled that within me, to want to be that type of person for someone else. As someone with a Native history, I’ve had people who put in a lot of work to help get me where I am today. My heritage helped me get to where I am.”
Like Hunter and Allen, Burns shares the implacable desire to provide for his people; having the opportunity to return the favor to those who have already given him opportunities of his own.
“Even though I didn’t grow up on a reservation, the want and desire to give back is something that I have a need in my heart for,” he said. “The culture has done so much for me.”
