The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation will be home to a newly constructed medical center. Congress has appropriated $17 million for the construction of the Elbowoods Memorial Health Center, to be located north of the Fort Berthold Community College in New Town. It is expected to be completed by late 2011.

Representatives of the Three Affiliated Tribes want the new hospital to serve both Indian and non-Indian patients. The Indian Health Service has said no, and the tribes have sued.

The first priority of the Elbowoods Center needs to be providing care for its American Indian patients. But providing health care anywhere in the United States can prove to be challenging. Opening the doors of the new hospital to non-Indian patients could determine whether it's self-sufficient or not. The Three Affiliated Tribes is right to make the request, and IHS should have granted it.

Chairman Marcus Levings was practical in his view of the request:"The main goal is to be self-supporting. It's in the community's best interest to make it a business …"

Having a colorblind hospital on a reservation isn't unusual. Opening the Elbowoods Center's doors breaks no precedents.

Giving non-Indians access to the hospital would help address another problem- providing health care to people in rural North Dakota. For many rural residents, an emergency trip to a hospital in New Town would be much quicker than going to Minot or Bismarck-Mandan. It would, in general, make health care more accessible in that rural area.

The Tribune's Sunday front page story was about the difficulty small rural communities have in finding nurses. Opening up the Elbowoods center could help attract nurses to Fort Berthold Indian Reservation and the surrounding area, by way of its ability to attract qualified medical support staff.

And, finally, removing restrictions as to whom the hospital could treat goes towards removing a separation between Indian and non-Indian people and, in doing so, should promote better understanding of our many separate cultures.

The IHS should not wait for the court to rule. It should move now to grant the request to serve non-Indians at the Elbowoods Memorial Health Center. It would be in the best interest of reservation community, as well the non-Indian residents of the surrounding area.