Member since
1981
Lives in
Rosebud, S.D.
His job
Foster is director of behavioral health at the Rosebud Indian Health Service Hospital, a 38-bed hospital on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in Rosebud, S.D., an area marked by high unemployment, poverty and substance abuse. "We are a beautiful place in terms of the hills, trees, grass, rivers, animals, people and culture, but we are a very difficult place in socioeconomic terms," says Foster. With no psychiatrists on the reservation, Foster and the reservation's other four psychologists — including his wife, Becky — earned master's degrees in psychopharmacology to help improve care. By both working and living on the reservation, Foster sees firsthand how his interventions improve people's quality of life. "I find that very gratifying," he says.
A welcoming spirit
After the Fosters' first four children grew up, the couple adopted seven special-needs children. Their oldest son is 40, while their youngest children are 6-year-old twin girls. Balancing work and child-rearing often requires Daniel Foster to remind himself to breathe throughout the day. "I feel like a one-legged man at a kickboxing tournament a good deal of the time," he says.
A handball prodigy
Foster competed as a member of the U.S. National Handball Team, including in the Pan Am and Olympic Games, from 1971 to 1982. Foster, who had played football and basketball in college, came to handball as a fluke while he was in the Army in the early 1970s: Members of a handball team spied Foster working out one day and invited him to join them. He was a natural. "The coach ended up inviting me to compete in the nationals with the team in New York and we won the national championship," he says. He has earned several National Gold Medals in handball since, the latest in 2002.
Giving back
Foster decided to become a psychologist when he witnessed how many fellow soldiers suffered psychological wounds much like those American Indians bore from oppression. To contribute to the profession on the national level, Foster is a member of APA's Committee on Ethnic Minority Affairs and attends the annual meeting of the Society of Indian Psychologists — with all of his young children. Psychology, he believes, is the career he was born for. "I have truly enjoyed listening to and being a part of people's life narrative," he says.
— Jamie Chamberlin
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