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

Lori emphasizes that western medicine takes a microscopic view of illness, meaning that physicians focus solely on the ailment. In contrast, Navajo healing practices take a macroscopic view, believing that all elements of the human being and their interactions with others and the surrounding natural world are important to health and wellbeing. During the outbreak of the hantavirus, it was a medicine man who helped lead CDC officials to determine that the cause of illness was related to mice. Through generations of keen observations, the medicine man knew that “‘rain life,’ “piñon tree life,’ and ‘mouse life’ had fallen out of balance” (127), causing human illness. Despite the role that traditional beliefs played in helping solve the mysterious illness, CDC officials and national newspapers continued to focus solely on the mouse. While racism perhaps played a role in this omission, it also demonstrated the challenges that some western medicine practitioners have in acknowledging the interconnectedness of life.

Part of the strength of Lori’s overall argument is her ability to show how these two traditions are stronger combined. Surgeons helped remove whatever was causing the individual illness, like a gallbladder or appendix. Navajo medicine men help patients, often who are scared to go to hospitals or undergo surgical procedures, by buoying their mental and spiritual wellbeing. Because the mind, body, and spirit are all interconnected, western medicine in conjunction with Navajo healing practices result in better patient recovery outcomes. Lori’s birthing experience is one example. The medicine woman’s prayers helped Lori to relax and feel less nauseous. In turn, this might have helped the caesarean section, a procedure that Lori was not keen on having, go more smoothly.  

Lori provides concrete examples about how historic federal policies continue to have profound psychological, social, physical, and economic impacts on Native Americans. This is an effective approach because it forces readers to recognize that centuries of trauma can destroy communities. Her father’s story was one way Lori illustrated this point. Alcoholism is a plague that the Navajo people collectively experience. Her father was extremely intelligent, but constantly facing racism, which prevented him from fulfilling his dreams of practicing medicine, wore him down. To escape his grief and anger, he, like many other Navajo, turned to alcohol. Alcohol is also killing Native American young adults. The leading cause of deaths are car accidents, and around 60 percent of these accidents happen because of alcohol.

Teenage deaths are high on reservations. In overhearing a conversation between two African-American staff members at the hospital about their childhood friends that had been killed or were in jail, Lori realized that many of the youth she knew growing up had also died. These deaths, due to alcohol, car accidents, and suicide, were not something talked about among the Navajo. Yet what partly explains this high prevalence of teenage deaths is also the centuries of oppression and maltreatment, which have helped to fracture the Native American community.

Some Navajo people, especially the elders, were also afraid of what hospitals and non-Native American doctors would do to them or family members. They lived through times where Navajo land was forcibly taken from them, where they were punished in school for speaking Navajo, and forced to endure teachers and government officials telling them that their culture and language were inferior to the broader American society. Some might have had family members who participated in the Long Walk, which resulted in at least 3,000 people dying from starvation, exposure, and disease. Because of this trauma, they had a hard time believing western medicine could be a good thing. Melanie’s grandmother is one example. She understood that her granddaughter was incredibly sick, but was afraid of what would doctors would do to her in the hospital. By providing the reader with some historical context about what the federal government did to Native Americans, it helps the reader see from the perspective of Melanie’s grandmother.