Navajo medicine
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Navajo medicine covers a range of traditional healing practices of the
In addition, medicine and healing are deeply tied with religious and spiritual beliefs, taking on a form of shamanism. These cultural ideologies deem overall health to be ingrained in supernatural forces that relate to universal balance and harmony. The spiritual significance has allowed the Navajo healing practices and Western medical procedure to coexist as the former is set apart as a way of age-long tradition.
Health and traditional belief
Illness
Illness is described as the manifested mental or physical consequence brought on by a disruption of patient harmony. Some causes of this disruption include taboo transgression, excessive behavior, improper animal contact, improper ceremony conduction, or contact with malignant entities including spirits,
Occupational roles
Medicine men
Navajo
Hand tremblers
Mechanisms of traditional healing
Ceremonies
A number of healing ceremonies are performed according to a given patient situation. Some chants and rites for curing purposes include:
- The Blessing Wayrite is usually done over pregnant women or any person for promoting good health and prosperity. The ceremony is the most frequently used one and resembles how the Holy People acted to create the world and establish harmony.
- The Enemy Wayrite is done as an exorcism to remove ghosts, violence and negativity that can bring disease and do harm to host health and balance.
- The Night Way is a healing ceremony that takes course over nine days. Each day the patient is cleansed through a varying number of exercises done to attract holiness or repel evil in the form of exorcisms, sweat baths, and sand painting ceremonies. On the final day the one who is sung over inhales the "breath of dawn" and is deemed cured.[2]
Herbs
See Navajo ethnobotany for a list of plants and how they were used.
Navajo Indians utilize approximately 450 species for medicinal purposes, the most plant species of any native tribe. Herbs for healing ceremonies are collected by a medicine man accompanied by an apprentice. Patients can also collect these plants for treatment of minor illnesses. Once all necessary wild plants are collected, an herbal tea is made for the patient, accompanied by a short prayer. In some ceremonies, the herbal mixture causes patient vomiting to ensure bodily cleanliness. Purging can also require the patient to immerse themselves in a yucca root sud bath. Any distribution of medicinal herbs to a patient is accompanied by spiritual chanting.
The Navajo people recognize the need for botanical
Popular plants included in Navajo herbal medicine include Sagebrush (Artemisia spp.), Wild Buckwheats (Eriogonum spp.), Puccoon (Lithospermum multiflorum), Cedar Bark (Cedrus deodara), Sage (Salvia spp.), Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja spp.), Juniper Ash (Juniperus spp.), and Larkspur (Delphinium spp.).[3]
Sand paintings
U.S. government influence during the 20th century
External aid and reliance
As prompted by the Meriam Report in 1928, federal commitment to Indian health care under the New Deal increased as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Medical Division expanded, making medical care more accessible, affordable, and tolerated by the Navajo populace.
Increased demand of BIA medical care by Native Indians conflicted with post World War II conservatives who resented government funded and privileged health care. Growing interest in Indian termination policy in addition to unaided medical attention called for a transition of medical affluence by both native and non-native parties.
Under the
Preserving tradition and promoting identity
Expanding Western medical influence and diminishing medicine men in the second half of the 20th century helped to initiate activism for traditional medical preservation as well as Indian representation in Western medical institutions.
With the coming of the 1970s spawned new opportunities for Navajo medical self-determination. The Indian Health Care Improvement Act 1976 aided local Navajo communities in autonomously administering their own medical facilities and prompted natives to gain more bureaucratic positions in the Indian Health Service. The gained presence of native people in medical institutions also helped ease many who regarded non-Navajo medical providers with mistrust.[4]
Community medical care that relied less on government involvement also took root in Rough Rock and Ganado, both towns that administered their own health care services. Navajo Nation Health Foundations was run in Ganado solely by Navajo people. In expressing identity in the medical community, the Navajo Nation took advantage of the National Health Planning and Resources Development Act to create the Navajo Health Systems Agency in 1975, being the only American Indian group to do so during that time.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e f Davies, Wade. Healing Ways, Navajo Health Care In The Twentieth Century. Univ of New Mexico Press, 2001.
- ^ "Navajo Ceremonials". www.hanksville.org. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
- ^ Roebuck, Paul. "Navajo Ethnobotany - Diné Nanise and Ethnobotanical Analysis of Early Navajo Site LA 55979." . N.p., 2007. Web. 16 Dec 2011. [drarchaeology.com/publications/earlynavajoethnobot.pdf]
- ^ Schwarz, Maureen Trudelle. I Choose Life: Contemporary Medical and Religious Practices in the Navajo World. Univ of Oklahoma Pr, 2008