The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing

The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing (1999) is the autobiography of Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord. It details her journey to become the first Navajo female surgeon, overcoming the challenges presented to her by her own Navajo culture as well as the prevailing stereotype at the time that only men could be surgeons. Along this journey, Lori realizes that western medicine is facing a crisis. It has forgotten that its true purpose is to help heal people. Working with Navajo patients, especially at the Gallup Indian Medical Center, makes Lori realize that western medicine can learn from traditional Navajo healing practices. She goes on to strongly advocate for the blending of these two practices to produce a strong form of medicine.

The book’s title, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear, illustrates the dualism that is the heart of Lori’s argument. The scalpel symbolizes Lori’s professional career as a surgeon. The silver bear represents her Navajo heritage and guiding light. Modern medicine does many incredible things, especially in terms of healing the body. However, it currently takes a microscopic view of healing and fails to see how the whole human being (mind, body, and spirit), as well as an individual’s relationships to family and community and the natural world, impact health and wellbeing.

The Introduction through Chapter 2 focuses on Lori’s youth and experiences as an undergraduate at Dartmouth. In these opening chapters, Lori details her struggle with walking between two worlds. As a child, she never felt like she belonged to either the Navajo or white community. It is her ability to see through two cultural lenses, however, that ultimately make her a better surgeon. She is open to blending two different perspectives on medicine to produce its strongest form. Family and community are also incredibly important to Lori. Her grandmother serves as a source of inspiration since she too was from two different cultures. Becoming part of the Native American community at Dartmouth helps ease Lori’s sense of loneliness and homesickness. These chapters lay the foundation for why Lori comes to believe that relationships matter to a person’s overall health.

Chapters 3 and 4 explore Lori’s path to the medical field and her early years as a physician. She provides firsthand experiences with the barriers she had to overcome to eventually become a surgeon. The first is personal. Lori felt that she did not have what it took to become a surgeon. A mentor in her life saw otherwise and encouraged her to look into medical school. The Navajo cultural traditions, such as taboos against touching dead bodies and asking probing questions, also presented their own challenges for Lori. Finally, as a female minority surgeon, she would learn that male surgeons would constantly challenge her. Lori overcame each of these challenges, only to face an even bigger challenge when she finished medical school: Her clinical and technical training did not teach her how to relate to and interact with her patients.

In Chapters 5-8, Lori outlines how she began to incorporate traditional Navajo healing practices into her surgical procedures. The secret lay in the Beauty Walk, which emphasizes living a harmonious and balanced life. A medicine man knew the source of a terrible illness that swept through the Navajo nation by following this Navajo concept. Within Lori’s story readers also learn the terrible toll that centuries of racism have taken on the Navajo people.

There are instances in the story where Lori’s two parallel worlds combine, such as at her wedding (Chapter 9), and collide, as is the case when a young girl needed surgery to save her life but her family was fearful of what doctors would do to her in a hospital (Chapter 10).

As the book heads into the concluding chapters, Lori’s journey with Navajo healing practices becomes more personal. She begins to incorporate the Beauty Walk into her personal life. Lori recognizes when her life has gotten off balance (Chapter 11) and decides to visit a medicine man for the first time to help her correct this balance for both her and her baby’s sake (Chapter 12). Through Lori’s own birthing experience, she also sees firsthand the power of blending western medicine and Navajo healing practices (Chapter 13). Lori wraps her argument up by reaffirming that it is possible to change the course of medicine by introducing Navajo ideas about healing (Chapter 14).

The Scalpel and the Silver Bear illustrates that minority women, even in the face of great adversity, are able to pursue their dreams. In so doing, Lori will also help change the world of medicine for the better and help others hear the concerns of the Navajo people.