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

This chapter focuses on Lori’s path to becoming a surgeon. Her first post-college job was working for a medical researcher at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. At Dartmouth, Lori struggled with science classes. As a result, she thought she could not pursue medicine. At this job, however, she was able to easily learn the concepts. The medical researcher encouraged her to think about medical school. As Lori notes, “in traditional Navajo belief, speaking a thought into the air gives it more power” (36). Lori started taking science courses at the university and saw parallels between the scientific way of looking at the world and Native American cosmology. She applied to and was accepted at Stanford University’s School of Medicine.

Lori faced many obstacles on her path to becoming a surgeon. First, she was female, and at that time there were few female surgeons. Lori was also Native American. Not only were there few Native American surgeons, but many aspects of western medicine and surgery went against traditional Navajo customs and beliefs. One poignant example is when Lori had to dissect a cadaver for the first time in a class. One of the strongest taboos in the Navajo culture is against touching dead bodies.