These witches are seen as the antithesis of Navajo values, performing malevolent ceremonies and using manipulative magic in stark contrast to the beneficial works of medicine people.
Stories often depict skin-walkers using their powers for evil, and they are considered a source of fear and mystery within Navajo communities.
Traditional accounts describe them as powerful sorcerers who, after engaging in various nefarious acts, gain the ability to transform into animals at will.
While community healers and cultural workers are known as medicine men and women, or by other positive terms in the community's Indigenous language, witches are seen as evil, performing harmful ceremonies and manipulative magic in a perversion of the good works medicine people traditionally perform.
Keene, founder of the website Native Appropriations, has written in response to non-Navajos incorporating the legends into their writing (and specifically the impact when J. K. Rowling did so) that when this is done, "We as Native people are now opened up to a barrage of questions about these beliefs and traditions ... but these are not things that need or should be discussed by outsiders.