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

The Navajo people have a concept called “Walking in Beauty.” To the Navajo, beauty means living a life that is in harmony and balance with everything around it. Individuals must care for their mind, body, and spirit as well as their relationships with family and community members and the natural world. Lori frequently refers to the Beauty Way and strongly believes it is the Navajo people’s gift to the rest of the world. She provides a number of anecdotes from her personal and professional experiences to show how this concept could have a profound impact on western medicine. She credits this concept with helping to make her a better physician and cites research in the final chapter that supports her assertion that health and wellbeing are multidimensional. 

Lori uses the term scalpel to symbolize her life as a professional surgeon. At times, this life appears to collide with her Navajo beliefs and traditions. To get at the inside of a human body, surgeons typically use a scalpel. This action, however, disturbs the natural beauty and harmony of the body, which is inappropriate from a Navajo standpoint. Lori notes, “a surgical knife would defile an intact, miniature universe, with rules and systems that evolved naturally over millennia” (144).