What is The Scalpel and the Silver Bear about?

The Scalpel and the Silver Bear chronicles Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord's journey as the first Navajo woman surgeon who integrates Western medicine with traditional Navajo healing practices. The book explores how she merges modern surgical techniques with the Navajo philosophy of "Walking in Beauty"—a holistic approach emphasizing balance, harmony, and the interconnectedness of mind, body, spirit, family, and community in the healing process.

Who is Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord?

Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord is a groundbreaking Navajo surgeon who grew up on a New Mexico reservation before attending Dartmouth College and Stanford University Medical School. She overcame significant cultural and gender barriers in the male-dominated field of surgery, then returned to serve her community at an Indian Health Service hospital on the Navajo reservation, pioneering an approach that respects both scientific medicine and traditional healing wisdom.

Who should read The Scalpel and the Silver Bear?

The Scalpel and the Silver Bear is essential reading for medical professionals seeking culturally sensitive care approaches, anyone interested in Native American culture and healthcare disparities, and readers drawn to memoirs about overcoming adversity. Healthcare workers, medical students, and those exploring holistic healing philosophies will find Dr. Alvord's integration of Navajo wisdom with modern medicine particularly valuable and transformative.

Is The Scalpel and the Silver Bear worth reading?

The Scalpel and the Silver Bear remains highly relevant despite being published in 1999, offering powerful insights into cultural competency in healthcare and the mind-body-spirit connection. Readers praise Dr. Alvord's storytelling and the book's ability to address serious issues like racial healthcare disparities without being overwhelming, though some note occasional redundancy in the narrative. The memoir successfully balances personal autobiography with universal lessons about inclusive, compassionate medical care.

What does "Walking in Beauty" mean in The Scalpel and the Silver Bear?

Walking in Beauty is the central Navajo concept that Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord advocates throughout The Scalpel and the Silver Bear, representing balance and harmony rather than aesthetic beauty. This philosophy encompasses caring for mind, body, and spirit while maintaining right relationships with family, community, animals, environment, and the universe. Dr. Alvord demonstrates how this holistic framework can transform medical practice by viewing patients within their complete cultural and social context.

What does the title The Scalpel and the Silver Bear symbolize?

The title symbolizes the dualism at the heart of Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord's approach to medicine. The scalpel represents her professional identity as a Western-trained surgeon and modern medical science, while the silver bear symbolizes her Navajo heritage, spiritual guidance, and traditional healing wisdom. Together, they illustrate her mission to blend these two worlds into a more complete, compassionate form of healthcare that addresses the whole person.

How does The Scalpel and the Silver Bear address healthcare disparities?

The Scalpel and the Silver Bear exposes the tragic reality of racial disparities in medical care faced by Native American patients while modeling solutions through cultural sensitivity and inclusivity. Dr. Alvord shows how integrating family, community, and cultural traditions into patient care leads to dramatically better health outcomes. The book argues that hospital staff should form "communities of care" that respect patients' cultural histories and healing practices alongside standard medical protocols.

What health issues does The Scalpel and the Silver Bear discuss?

The Scalpel and the Silver Bear covers multiple health challenges affecting the Navajo community, including gallbladder problems, the devastating impact of alcoholism on Native Americans, and the hantavirus epidemic known as the "Navajo Plague." Dr. Alvord examines these issues through both medical and cultural lenses, demonstrating how traditional healing ceremonies and medicine men's wisdom complement modern treatments. Each condition becomes a lens for exploring the importance of holistic, culturally-informed healthcare approaches.

The scalpel and the silver bear

Lori Arviso Alvord

4.03(1378 Reviews)

Overview of The scalpel and the silver bear

The first Navajo woman surgeon's revolutionary memoir bridges Western medicine with traditional healing wisdom. Featured in PBS's "Medicine Woman" and celebrated in the National Library of Medicine, Dr. Alvord's philosophy of "Walking in Beauty" is transforming how we understand healing across cultures.

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Chapter 1

Between Two Worlds: A Surgeon's Journey Through Navajo Medicine

In the heart of the Navajo reservation, a young girl once dreamed beyond the boundaries of Crownpoint, New Mexico. This girl would become Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord, the first Navajo woman surgeon in America. Her groundbreaking memoir "The Scalpel and the Silver Bear" has become required reading in medical schools nationwide, transforming how physicians approach healing across cultural divides. Oprah Winfrey featured it in her magazine as a "book that changed my life," while the New England Journal of Medicine praised it as "essential reading for anyone working in healthcare." Beyond its medical significance, this remarkable story bridges ancient wisdom and modern science, offering solutions to healthcare's most pressing challenges. As we face a global crisis of disconnection in medicine, Alvord's journey reveals how indigenous wisdom might help restore what's been lost in our technological advancement-the essential human connection that makes true healing possible.

Chapter 2

Walking the Path Between Worlds

Growing up Navajo meant living with specific cultural warnings: never put shoes on wrong feet (an omen of death), don't whistle too loudly (might call up wind), never sleep with head pointing north (position of the dead), and beware of skinwalkers - shape-shifters who could make you sick or even kill you. When Navajos fall ill, they often wonder which traditional rule they've broken, and may call a hataalii (medicine man) to restore balance. This spiritual worldview contrasted sharply with how we saw "Indians" portrayed in television westerns - as monosyllabic, half-naked savages with painted faces and scalps. Remarkably, my sisters and I never connected these portrayals to ourselves. The actors didn't look like us, and the behaviors depicted violated Navajo values of modesty and respect for the dead. We assumed these "Indians" were strange, exotic people - not representations of us. The challenge was navigating my daily life in Crownpoint. On the elementary school playground, swept by mesa winds that stung like tiny needles, I stood between worlds. To one side were Navajo girls speaking a language I barely understood - my family hadn't encouraged learning Navajo, believing English offered more opportunities. On the other side were white children of BIA employees, social workers, and reservation doctors. My younger sisters found their places more easily - Karen through basketball, a universal language on the reservation, and light-skinned Robyn by playing with white children. At Dartmouth, I missed everything about home - the feast days, Indian markets, ceremonials, traditional foods like roasted corn and red chile stew, and the distinctive smell of wildness and desert that defined the Navajo world. I wondered if having a kinaalda ceremony (the Navajo coming-of-age ritual for girls) would have made me stronger and more confident in facing this alienation. The ceremony, part of the Blessing Way tradition, celebrates a girl's transition to womanhood through songs, massage from female relatives, baking a corn cake, and running toward the sun for four days. It gives young women strength, power and confidence as they enter womanhood. Though my less traditional family didn't perform this ceremony for me or my sisters, the matriarchal Navajo culture still prepared me better than many white women for navigating a "man's world." At Dartmouth, a few things provided comfort - campus dogs that roamed freely like "rez dogs" and playful squirrels that reminded me of prairie dogs back home. Academically, I excelled in literature and social sciences but struggled with physical and life sciences, earning my only D in calculus. My Navajo upbringing taught me never to draw attention to myself, so I didn't raise my hand in class - behavior interpreted as disinterest rather than cultural humility. I found refuge in Dartmouth's Native American program and community of students from various tribes who shared similar experiences of disconnection from the mainstream student body. We formed an intense bond, becoming a new kind of tribe with our own ceremonies like the annual campus powwow where fancy dancers and women in jingle dresses would spin to the drums of Plains Indians. In the evenings, we'd continue with "49" parties where ancient rhythms mixed with modern English lyrics about reservation life, pickup trucks, or the Bureau of Indian Affairs. These experiences helped heal my historical grief and anger, transforming it into a powerful force I would carry forward.

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Chapter 3

Journey Down the Medicine Path

Since childhood, I'd been fascinated by the human body, seeing it as Earth in miniature - blood vessels like rivers, breathing like atmosphere, bones like bedrock. At fourteen, working in a reservation pharmacy, I marveled at how pharmacists memorized complicated medication names and their effects. I wondered where in the encyclopedia's transparent body system pages the human soul resided - perhaps in the invisible, magical plastic pages themselves. After Dartmouth, during the early 1980s recession, I found work as a research assistant for Dr. Gary Rosenberg at the University of New Mexico, studying brain physiology. Though the pay was terrible ($9,000 a year), the work captivated me. One day, Dr. Rosenberg asked if I'd considered medical school - an idea that seemed impossible for a Navajo woman. I couldn't recall ever hearing of one. Despite my fears from past science struggles at Dartmouth, I decided to experiment with night classes in biology. To my surprise, I thrived. The mechanics of human physiology enchanted me - how a single cell could become an entire organism through mitosis, how DNA held the recipe for life, how immune systems fought disease. The body's systems reflected the Navajo concept of hozho - beautiful balance. I challenged myself further with physics during lunch breaks while working full-time. When I told Dr. Rosenberg I wanted to quit to pursue medical school full-time, he subtly smiled and supported my decision. Despite financial struggles and a university adviser warning me not to get my hopes up, I took the MCATs and applied to top schools. I chose Stanford for its beautiful campus, proximity to my sister Karen, and active Native American community. Though being outside the sacred mountains was lonely and unsettling, having this support network was crucial. My class included only two other Native Americans: Robert Fairbanks, a Chippewa from Minnesota, and Migue Dozier, from Santa Clara Pueblo. I struggled with the non-Navajo learning style - uncomfortable raising my hand, disliking competition, and reluctant to draw attention to myself. In Navajo culture, silence is valued and words used sparingly. My greatest challenge came with cadaver dissection. Navajos strictly avoid touching the dead, believing they hold ch'iindis (evil spirits). When a person dies, the "good" part leaves with the spirit while the "evil" remains with the body. Traditionally, Navajos sought outsiders to bury their dead and would destroy hogans where deaths occurred. Many believe touching the dead can cause madness, infertility, or death, requiring elaborate purification ceremonies. Standing before that formaldehyde-preserved body, I faced a direct violation of my cultural beliefs. The cadaver's slate-gray, shriveled appearance helped me distance myself from its humanity. I justified my actions by framing medical knowledge as similar to a medicine man's - a tremendous gift I could bring home to help thousands. With determination, I made that first incision.

Chapter 4

The Healing Power of Song

In many cultures, song is medicine. More than just vibrations of air across throat membranes, songs come from mind, memory, community, and heart-that intersection where physiology, feeling, and spirit meet. Despite modern medicine's impressive technologies, my tribe practices healing through song. When someone falls ill, a singer performs ceremonies called chantways-Beauty Way, Night Chant, Mountain Way-each addressing different ailments. I witnessed this power when a medicine man sang for Charlie Nez, my cancer patient who had undergone surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. As I watched, hope returned to Charlie's eyes-that essential will to live that all physicians know is crucial for healing. In that moment, I understood that both medicines were needed. As the first Navajo woman surgeon, I live between two worlds. In one, I practice advanced Western medicine; in the other, people heal through songs, herbs, and sand paintings. My father was full-blooded Navajo, my mother bilagdana (white). My life feels like a rug I'm weaving, with one culture as warp and the other as weft, creating something meaningful from these contradictions. Growing up on the reservation, doctors were always white men in my experience. Yet my mother encouraged me to read and dream beyond Crownpoint's boundaries. From early on, I understood my split identity - what Navajos call 'alni (a person who is half) or what Chinese call yuckso' (neither here nor there). Writing this book challenges Navajo values of humility and privacy, but I believe my story matters for Navajo girls seeking possibilities, for those interested in broader healing concepts, and for doctors whose practices feel incomplete. Born in a military hospital in Tacoma, my father paid for my delivery with silver dollars - all the money he had. We returned to the reservation where I grew up with my sisters in poverty. My shindli (Navajo grandmother) shared stories of our clan and history, teaching us to embrace both American ways and Dine traditions. From her example, we learned pride in our heritage, but our eyes showed us Navajos as downtrodden. We inherited what's called "historical grief" - the burden of centuries of suffering that becomes your own as you learn your people's history. After medical school, I returned to serve my tribe despite better opportunities elsewhere. I discovered that by respecting Navajo customs and speaking their language, I could bridge the gap between Western medicine and traditional beliefs. Remarkably, as I incorporated Navajo concepts of balance (hezho) into my practice, my patients' surgical outcomes improved.

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Chapter 5

Life Out of Balance

Returning to the Navajo reservation after my medical training proved unexpectedly challenging. Despite my medical accomplishments, I found myself caught between worlds, no longer fitting perfectly into my homeland as I'd imagined. When introducing myself to Navajo patients as "Dr. Cupp, your surgeon," I'd extend my hand only to have it hang awkwardly in the air before receiving a delicate, pressureless handshake - nothing like the firm grip bilagdanas (white people) used. I'd explain my Navajo identity through my clans - "Tsi'naajinii and Ashijhi Dinee" - and mention my grandmother from White Horse Lake. Patients would acknowledge knowing my clans or grandmother, but then peer at me curiously, sometimes asking with doubt, "You are... Navajo?" My heart would sink, realizing that in learning medicine, I had also "learned to be white." With my short pageboy haircut, white medical jacket, and stethoscope, I didn't look like a traditional Dine woman to my Dine patients. My medical knowledge had come at a high personal cost. After negotiating with the Indian Health Service to work at Gallup Indian Medical Center rather than being sent to Oklahoma, I bought a small house on the edge of town at the base of the Hogback Mountains (Tse yik'aan). The home featured gray-blue carpeting, a fireplace, and a skylight. My grandmother Grace soon moved in with me, and from her window, she could see Churchrock, a sculptured finger of rock near where she was born ninety years earlier. Visible from nearby was Tsoodzil (Mount Taylor), the southern sacred mountain which, according to creation stories, was fastened to earth with a stone knife, covered with turquoise blankets, and decorated with dark mists and female rain, guarded by Big Snake. Living within view of this holy place was a blessing. At GIMC, the intersection of cultures created unique medical situations. Doctors struggled to communicate with Navajo patients through translators, often missing crucial cultural context. My colleague Tim Simpson once removed a 2.5-centimeter porcupine quill from a patient's intestine - a man who believed he'd been "witched" by an enemy. Another patient told me both his father and brother had died from "choking" caused by skinwalkers - Navajo witches who featured prominently in the ghost stories of my childhood. A pivotal moment in my understanding of Navajo medicine came during a difficult gallbladder operation on Evelyn Bitsui. The procedure was challenging - inflamed tissue, bleeding issues, and a struggling nurse trainee who couldn't find the right instruments. My fatigue and frustration turned to anger as I shouted at the nurse. Though we completed the surgery, Evelyn suffered a stroke the next day. Despite extensive testing, we found no medical explanation for her stroke. But instinctively, my Navajo side understood. The disharmony in the operating room - my anger, the nurse's defensiveness, the patient's fear - had created perfect conditions for complications. Even under anesthesia, patients sense the energy around them. This experience taught me to integrate Navajo healing concepts into my Western practice. In Navajo tradition, illness comes from imbalance or disharmony in any area of life. I began creating a more harmonious healing environment by speaking Navajo phrases to patients, touching them respectfully and only when necessary, and viewing them as extended family members.

Chapter 6

Rez Dogs and Crow Dreams

During morning rounds in the ICU, I reviewed patients with fellow physicians - each case revealing alcohol's devastating impact on our community. Ray Slim with cirrhosis and hepatitis from weekend binge drinking; Robert Thompson with severe bleeding ulcers; Betty Redhouse with knife wounds from domestic violence; and Henry Antonio who attempted suicide in jail. Gallup had about fifty bars for fifty thousand people, with over ten thousand DUI arrests annually. The epidemic touched every aspect of Navajo life - creating the highest rates of fetal alcohol syndrome in the country and becoming what some called a "lubricant of domination." My father's story personified this tribal tragedy. Robert Cupp was an extraordinary man who could communicate with animals - especially rez dogs and crows - and taught us traditional Navajo ways of moving silently through nature and respecting the animal world. But he carried deep wounds from being punished for speaking Navajo as a child and being taught his culture was inferior. Despite being a straight-A student who attended prestigious schools and studied pre-med, he abandoned his dreams, married my blonde, blue-eyed mother, and turned to alcohol to escape his grief. His binges would leave us searching bars, police stations, and even morgues. In 1993, he died when his car rolled four times near mile marker 47 on Interstate 40. Like my patients whose lives were scarred by alcoholism, my father's story revealed how generations taught to feel shame about our culture lost the very traditional beliefs that could have kept them strong.

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Chapter 7

Ceremony Medicine

In Navajo, there is no word for cancer. When explaining this illness to patients, I struggled to convey its meaning, using phrases like 'ats'tis naatdzid ("a sore that does not heal") or natzee ("something that rots"). My patient Carolyn Yazzie, a college-educated Navajo professional who introduced herself by her clans (Biih Din'e'e and To'dhdni), faced cultural isolation after her breast cancer diagnosis. Her family and coworkers avoided her food and touch, fearing contagion. Many Navajos believe cancer results from evil actions or can be transmitted like other "white man's illnesses." I recommended surgery but suggested she could also see a medicine man, recognizing that traditional healing ceremonies provide crucial spiritual preparation for healing. Though Carolyn didn't return, I attended a Yeibechei ceremony for another young woman - the final night of a nine-day Night Chant held in winter "when the snakes are sleeping." Standing among five enormous pinon fires, I watched Talking God and other yei dancers approach the patient, who sprinkled them with corn pollen. The hypnotic chants, woodsmoke, rattles and drums created a powerful healing environment absent in Western medicine, reminding me of my tribal identity and the ceremonies of my childhood. For Navajos, wholeness and holiness are the same - everything is interconnected. Many traditional Navajos oppose surgery (na'agizh or "to cut open") as it disturbs the harmony of the whole. Navajo patients typically request their removed organs back, believing witches could use discarded body parts to cause harm. The best surgeons don't just operate on organs but on whole people with lives, families, and beliefs. Surgery itself can be a spiritual experience - when done correctly, movements are fluid and the team works in perfect concert. I learned to accommodate Navajo patients' requests for ceremonies before surgery, noting they resulted in calmer patients with lower heart rates and blood pressure. Medicine men worked through channels Western medicine didn't yet understand.

Chapter 8

The Spirit Horse's Bridle

Despite strict orders for bedrest due to my pregnancy-induced hypertension, I made a decision that might have seemed foolish to my Western medical colleagues - I drove three and a half hours to Tuba City to see a Navajo medicine man. Something deep within told me this journey was necessary for both me and my unborn son, whom we'd decided to name Kodiak (Kodi for short) after the great Alaskan bear. The drive took me through pine forests and into stark canyonlands, with Grandma's parting words - "Don't hit any bumps" - echoing in my mind as I navigated the rough highway. By noon, sweltering in hundred-degree heat, I questioned my own sanity as I caught my enormous reflection in a gas station refrigerator case. In Tuba City, I met Thomas Hataathlii, whose name itself means "medicine man." Far from the weathered elder I'd expected, Thomas was a young, athletic man with a modern sensibility who balanced his role as an IHS mental health counselor with his traditional calling as a healer. We connected immediately through the Navajo custom of establishing clan relationships - discovering we were related through the Ashijhi Dinee clan. Thomas shared how his path as a medicine man began at age four when his grandfather instructed him to run toward the dawn each morning. Shortly after, he had a profound encounter with a spirit horse after disturbing an old bridle in a sacred place. "You touched the spirit world," his grandfather had told him, marking him as a holy person. Though his mother had warned him that speaking too much English would change his ability to perform ceremonies, Thomas had managed to balance both worlds - becoming one of the youngest Navajo medicine men while also receiving formal education. He had mastered the Blessing Way ceremony with its more than three hundred songs, learning them through direct transmission rather than recordings. In Thomas's modern trailer home, he transformed into a medicine man by tying a blue sash around his head. He instructed me to kneel on a Pendleton blanket while holding his grandfather's medicine bundle of eagle feathers. During the ceremony, Thomas sang prayers in Navajo, guiding me to pull the bundle toward my heart four times while chanting "It is beautiful all around me." He sprinkled corn pollen over specific points on my body and had me turn around once outside before concluding. Despite the scorching heat, I felt peaceful driving home, passing through a thunderstorm and seeing a rainbow touch down near the highway-a sign that everything would be alright for Kodi, Jon, and me.

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Chapter 9

Walking in Beauty

After my grandmother Grace passed away at about ninety-one years old, I received an unexpected job offer from Dartmouth Medical School to become associate dean of student affairs. I hadn't been looking to leave Gallup, where I loved my practice and patients, but this opportunity came through Gordon Russell, a Dartmouth alumnus and advocate for the Native American Program. During interviews at Dartmouth, I shared my evolving philosophy about combining Navajo healing concepts with Western medicine-explaining "Hozho nahasdlii" (Walking in Beauty) as living in harmony with oneself, community, and environment. I contrasted Western medicine's compartmentalized approach with the Navajo healer's holistic view that examines a person's entire life context, recognizing that imbalance in relationships, community, or with nature can manifest as physical illness. I explained how imbalance extends beyond individuals to communities and nations. When communities lose balance, problems like gang violence, elder neglect, and drug abuse emerge. Traditional Native societies value elders for their wisdom and care for children communally. At the national level, nations living in disharmony lead to war. Humans must also maintain balance with the natural world - Native peoples have always respected animals as having spirits, protecting species for millennia, while Western society's carelessness threatens extinction for many species. In the Navajo worldview, sun, water, forests and creatures have spirit and life, considered family as "Mother Earth, Father Sky," and animals as siblings. This reverence protected our planet for thousands of years, though it now faces grave jeopardy. I described my vision of the perfect hospital to my Dartmouth interviewers. It would be physically beautiful with adobe walls, natural smells like roasted green chili, light-filled spaces, round windows, porches and gardens. Beyond state-of-the-art equipment, it would include ceremonial spaces and staff who speak patients' languages. Everyone from receptionists to surgeons would be committed to patients' comfort and healing. Illness would be viewed holistically - not as a single organ problem but as an imbalance in any part of a patient's world: body, mind, spirit, relationships, community, or environment. I was pleased to discover Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center embodied many of these ideals - surrounded by forest, flooded with natural light, without hospital smells or intercom pages, creating a healing environment where nature was invited close to encourage healing. Returning to Dartmouth as faculty after visiting at sixteen when I felt invisible was profound. The campus was now more diverse and welcoming to Native Americans and women. Though my new responsibilities seemed overwhelming - overseeing student affairs, minority affairs, financial aid and more - I was excited to teach medical students to respect the privilege of placing hands inside another human being, to gain patient trust, and to understand healing principles I'd learned from my tribe's ancient beliefs. When a student asked if Navajo concepts had relevance for non-Indian peoples, I confidently answered "Absolutely." Like the story of Hosteen Owl and Hosteen Bat bringing medicine to the Fire People, I felt I was helping share Navajo healing ideas with the world. As we left New Mexico, passing Mount Taylor in the rearview mirror, I thought of my daughter's placenta buried on its peak and whispered, "I am taking you with me, if only in my heart."

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Key Themes in The scalpel and the silver bear

indigenous medicine
cultural bridge-building
integrative healing
navajo philosophy
surgical training

Quotes from The scalpel and the silver bear

silence is valued and words used sparingly.
Song is medicine.
I wondered where in the encyclopedia's transparent body system pages the human soul resided.
I stood between worlds.

Characters in The scalpel and the silver bear

Lori Arviso AlvordThe first Navajo woman surgeon and author
Dr. Gary RosenbergResearch physician who encouraged Alvord's career
KarenLori's sister who connected through basketball
RobynLori's younger sister

About the Author

Lori Arviso Alvord, M.D., is the pioneering author of The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing and a groundbreaking figure as the first Navajo woman board-certified in surgery. Born to a Navajo father and white mother on a New Mexico reservation, she attended Dartmouth College and Stanford Medical School, completing her surgical training in 1985. This memoir and medical narrative explores cultural identity, holistic healing, and the powerful integration of traditional Navajo practices with modern Western medicine.

After returning to serve at an Indian Health Service hospital in Gallup, Dr. Alvord pioneered an approach merging surgical expertise with Navajo healing traditions like the Beauty Way philosophy. She later became an associate dean at Dartmouth Medical School, championing culturally competent healthcare education.

Her award-winning book has been used for nearly 20 years at universities and medical schools across the United States, inspiring generations of Native American students and healthcare professionals.

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"Instead of endless scrolling, I just hit play on BeFreed. It saves me so much time."

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"I never knew where to start with nonfiction—BeFreed’s book lists turned into podcasts gave me a clear path."

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"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

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"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

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"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

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108

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201

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117

"Perfect balance between learning and entertainment. Finished ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ on my commute this week."

@Raaaaaachelw

"Crazy how much I learned while walking the dog. BeFreed = small habits → big gains."

@Matt, YC alum

108

"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

@Erin, Investment Banking Associate , NYC

254

"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

@djmikemoore

"BeFreed turned my guilty doomscrolling into something that feels productive and inspiring."

@Pitiful

4.5K

"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

@Leo, Law Student, UPenn

483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

@Cashflowbubu

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Chapter 9

The scalpel and the silver bear

OverviewOverview of The scalpel and the silver bear

One book. Many ways to hear it.

Between Two Worlds: A Surgeon's Journey Through Navajo Medicine

Walking the Path Between Worlds

See every word as you hear it

Journey Down the Medicine Path

The Healing Power of Song

Get more out of The scalpel and the silver bear

Life Out of Balance

Rez Dogs and Crow Dreams

See every word as you hear it

Ceremony Medicine

The Spirit Horse's Bridle

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Walking in Beauty

You made it to the end of The scalpel and the silver bear

Key Themes in The scalpel and the silver bear

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Characters in The scalpel and the silver bear

About the Author

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1,000,000+ curious minds.

1,000,000+ curious minds.

One book. Many ways to hear it.

Between Two Worlds: A Surgeon's Journey Through Navajo Medicine

Walking the Path Between Worlds

See every word as you hear it

Journey Down the Medicine Path

The Healing Power of Song

Get more out of The scalpel and the silver bear

Life Out of Balance

Rez Dogs and Crow Dreams

See every word as you hear it

Ceremony Medicine

The Spirit Horse's Bridle

Get more out of The scalpel and the silver bear

Walking in Beauty

You made it to the end of The scalpel and the silver bear

Users also liked

Discover more

Overview of The scalpel and the silver bear