37 pages • 1 hour read
Lori Arviso Alvord, Elizabeth Cohen Van PeltThe Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Rez Dogs and Crow Dreams”
During the early part of the 19th-century, the major US federal policy towards Native American tribes was removal and resettlement. Thousands of Native Americans died on these relocation marches due to exposure, disease, and starvation. The government relocated Native Americans to land that was unsuitable for agriculture or grazing, further impoverishing these individuals. From the mid-19th-century through the mid-20th-century, the US government pursued policies that tried to force assimilation and acculturation of Native Americans into American society. This policy had profound psychological, social, economic, and physical effects on generations of Native Americans who repeatedly learned that their culture and lifeways were inferior to the broader American culture.
The disadvantages Native Americans have faced for centuries partly explains one major problem facing Native American communities: high rates of alcohol abuse disorders. Native American youth have some of the highest rates of alcohol use disorders of any other racial/ethnic group in the US. There are also high rates of fetal alcohol syndrome among Native people. As Lori notes, the lives of many Native Americans have been “scarred by the disease of alcoholism” (81), including her own. Lori’s father died because of driving while intoxicated.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Ceremony Medicine”
This chapter illustrates the power of ceremony medicine. It opens with Lori telling the story of a patient named Carolyn Yazzie’s battle with cancer. Many Navajos believe that an individual performing a bad deed or evil action causes cancer, like other illnesses. Because the Navajos believe strongly in harmony, they look for causes to explain things that disrupt this notion. Family and community members will often ostracize individuals who have cancer until the disease’s removal. Carolyn mentions that her family will no longer eat her fry bread. Lori encourages her to undergo surgery, but Carolyn wants time to think the decision over.
After watching her patients deal with cancer, Lori strongly believes that a song by a hataałii increases their remission rates. One ceremony for a sick person is the Night Chant, which is a nine-night ceremony held during winter. The purpose of this ceremony is to restore a person’s harmony. By invitation, Lori attends a Yeibichai, the last night of the Night Chant, which is the most important. She attended, partly hoping it was for Carolyn. While the ceremony was for another sick girl, although Lori does eventually remove Carolyn’s tumor, it reaffirmed Lori’s belief that “ceremonies are magical and powerful things” (100). Lori emphasizes that the presence of family and community for nine days, hearing healing chants, and seeing dancing gods all have a positive effect on the ill person. These ceremonies are a form of medicine.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Spiritual Surgery”
Chapter 7 outlines what modern medicine can learn from traditional Navajo healing practices and beliefs. Modern medicine treats the body or whatever is causing the ailment, whereas medicine men treat the person as a whole (mind, body, and spirit). Medicine men are both healers and holy men. Because Navajos believe in the interconnectedness of everything, holiness and wholeness are the same thing for them. Surgery goes against this belief. Navajos do not understand how cutting open a human body and removing an organ is beneficial since this action disturbs the harmony of the whole individual. Patients will often request to keep the removed organ or diseased tissue. Lori has witnessed patients react better to medical procedures after participating in a ceremony before their surgery, including patients having lower heart and blood pressure rates and being more relaxed. These ceremonies demonstrate that the mind and spirit influence the body. To better heal individuals, Lori strongly believes that modern medicine should adopt the Navajo belief that “medicine was for the whole human creature” (112).
Chapter 8 Summary: “The Navajo Plague”
Western medicine takes a micro view of illness, whereas traditional Navajo healing takes a macro view. Lori recalls the fatal illness that swept through the Navajo nation during the spring of 1993, which caused Navajo people, often young and healthy, to die of “catastrophic asphyxiation” (119), meaning their lungs filled with fluid preventing them from breathing. This illness baffled the entire Navajo nation and Centers for Disease Control (CDC). National newspapers framed the virus as a Navajo disease and “the ugly stereotypes of ‘dirty Indian,’ ‘bad Indian,’ and ‘unhygienic Indian’ were rearing their heads again” (122). A Navajo physician consulted a hataałii about the ailment. The hataałii said the “illness was caused by an excess of rainfall, which had caused the piñon trees to bear too much fruit” (120). He recommended looking to the mouse, saying this illness had happened in the past. Because this large piñon nut harvest was a deviation from the nature’s harmony, it was causing illness. The CDC believed the disease was a hantavirus, which individuals’ contract from exposure to droppings or urine of infected deer mice. The hataałii was right. Mice fed on the overly bountiful piñon crop, in turn, spreading the disease to humans.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
These chapters further extend Lori’s argument that institutional racism has shattered Native American communities and identities. In Chapter 5, Lori tells the tragic story of her own father. To Lori, her “father really was two people” (87). One was the man who took pride in everything that his kids did. He did not miss any of their sporting games, supported his children getting an education, read Parents magazine, and played with his only grandchild at the time. The other man had “his life dreams scattered like frightened crows” (88). Like many Navajo children, he received punishments for speaking Navajo in school. Teachers told him repeatedly to forget his people’s culture and language and instead become American. Even though he wanted to be a doctor, the fact that he was Navajo made achieving this dream nearly impossible. He began to hate himself for not being able to achieve his dream or fit into broader American society. Like so many other Navajo people, he escaped this grief through alcohol. To Lori, the historic grief that her people feel have led to high rates of alcoholism on reservations.
Racism still impacts the Native American community. As Lori notes in Chapter 8, national newspapers originally labeled the hantavirus as the “Navajo plague” (121). This label illustrates that ugly stereotypes of Native Americans being dirty and unhygienic still exist. Navajo people are often more susceptible to diseases that have no longer crop up in other parts of the country and world. Part of this is because many live in extreme poverty on the reservations. Poor nutrition increases their susceptibly to these illnesses. One example is the high rate of gallbladder disease seen in the Native American populations. This is due to changes in diet and lifestyle, associated in part with forced relocation onto reservations. Traditional Native American diets included grains, beans, and limited meat. However, many diets now include high lipid, cholesterol, and sugar content. Their lifestyle also is more sedentary than it was in the past as well when they herded and farmed.
Lori also begins developing more fully her assertion that western medicine needs to make some vital changes, including viewing care more holistically. Patients fare poorly if they do not believe they will get well. Lori discusses how her patients fare better when they are spiritually and mentally prepared to fight their disease. For Navajo people, this spiritual and mental preparation often happens through a song by a hataałii. Lori illustrates the power of song in her story of attending the Yeibichai (Chapter 6). This ceremony not only includes healing chants, gods dancing, and smudging with gray ash in the dead of night, but it also surrounds the ill person with family and community. These elements combined are their own powerful form of medicine. To Lori, the hataałii have uncovered something lacking in western medicine (Chapter 7). Just focusing on the physical ailment does not necessarily cure a person. Rather, care needs to impact the mind, body, and spirit to truly heal someone. This notion relates to the Navajo people’s view that everything is related and connected.
