Dr. Jon Reyhner 

It was not an easy trip for her. She writes,

What saved her was her "strong reading background." She writes, "I read my way through the tiny local library and the vans that came to our community from the Books on Wheels program," encouraged by her parents "to read and dream" (p. 9). She could even get out of chores by reading.

She majored in the social science and graduated from Dartmouth in 1979. Not being able to get a job in Crownpoint, she went to Albuquerque where she was offered two jobs, one as a social worker and another paying much less as a medical research assistant at the University of New Mexico.

She took the lower paying job and became increasingly interested in medicine, taking the math and science classes she had avoided at Dartmouth at the University of New Mexico with the encouragement of her supervisor, which led her to being accepted by the prestigious medical school at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

Subject matter preparation was not the only problem she faced in college. "Navajos are taught from the youngest age never to draw attention to ourselves. So Navajo children do not raise their hands in class. At a school like Dartmouth, the lack of participation was seen as a sign not of humility but lack of interest and a disengaged attitude" (p. 30). Later in medical school she was viewed as "remote and disinterested" for similar reasons (p. 46).

One should not underestimate Dr. Alvord's accomplishments. Only 4% of the practicing surgeons in the United States are women, and only a few of those women are American Indians. While she got into medical school partly because of affirmative action, this meant that she was constantly tested. She held herself to a higher standard lest "My being a surgeon would be attributed to quota filling, not the result of hard work and my own merit" (p. 50).

In her hospital residency she credits a Pueblo Indian doctor for his help in teaching her how to be a caring doctor. A large part of The Scalpel and the Silver Bear concerns how Dr. Alvord worked to combine modern medical practice with traditional Navajo healing beliefs of walking in beauty and "living in balance and harmony" (p. 100).

Besides the hard work and success chronicled in Dr. Alvord's autobiography, she also describes the pain brought to her by her dad's descent into alcoholism and final death in an alcohol-related car crash.

She describes the gruesome medical statistics of Navajo and other Indian deaths from automobile accidents, an estimated 60% of which are alcohol related. As a surgeon she met some of these accident victims on the operating table in Gallup.

To a degree she blames schools, as an arm of European-American colonialism, for what happened to her father. She describes how,

Because of these outdated attitudes she was forced to study Navajo language as an adult to better serve her patients at Gallup Indian Medical Center. After a number of years practicing surgery in Gallup, Dr. Alvord returned to Dartmouth to work in its medical school as an associate dean so that other doctors in training could learn about the spiritual as well as the physical side of the healing profession, which she learned from Navajo culture and traditional Navajo healers.

I would highly recommend this book for adults, because it has much to say about educating our children, and to students in middle schools, high schools, and universities because it has much to tell them about persisting with their education and using their culture to help give them the strength to be successful adults.