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Ethnohistory 49.4 (2002) 878-880



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Healing Ways: Navajo Health Care in the Twentieth Century. By Wade Davies. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001. xv + 248 pp., maps, tables, halftones, notes, references, index. $39.95 cloth.)

Wade Davies has given us a clear and concise presentation of a complex piece of Navajo-American history. Written in an accessible style, Healing Ways documents the recent evolution of Navajo health care activities and institutions, demonstrating the important ways in which these practices [End Page 878] embed and reflect other aspects of cultural belief and practice. Davies's organization of the volume is straightforward, and it provides easy access to an enormous amount of information about the interaction between this traditional healing system and biomedicine. The introductory chapter sets the stage, giving a brief explanation of the basic terminology and components of Navajo healing and placing them in the broader context of nineteenth-century Navajo life. Davies addresses the problematic but inevitable comparison between Navajo and biomedical approaches to health and illness, paying attention to both similarities and differences. While biomedical practice assumes a reductionist philosophy of the body and therapeutic response, Navajo ideas about the nature of illness, like those documented for many other traditional healing systems, are far more holistic. Still, Davies is quick to point out the dangers in essentializing these systems, and a large portion of the book is devoted to a demonstration of the ways in which flexibility and change have characterized the two over the course of the past century.

Chapter 2 takes us on a whirlwind tour from 1864 to 1940, exploring how Western biomedical practices and institutions were introduced to the Navajo people, primarily through exposure to army physicians at Fort Sumner in the 1860s, followed by Christian missionaries, who used medical care as a proselytizing tool—though not a very effective one. During the early decades of the twentieth century, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (bia) began to make greater efforts to address Navajo health care concerns. While Western medical personnel were disdainful of Navajo healers, many of the native practitioners were cautiously optimistic about the possibility of working together, or at least not working against each other. The broad overview that Davies provides is essential for the general reader, allowing the nonspecialist to grasp the remaining finely grained narrative without getting lost in the minutiae.

Chapters 3 through 7 detail the period from 1941 through 1979. Davies points out that although the U.S. government had extended its commitment to increasing medical care on the Navajo reservation during the Great Depression, the level of care available during and after World War II dropped sharply. Those who had started to accept the use of biomedicine found that the resources were now simply gone, and so they could not avail themselves of these new healing techniques even when they were in fact desired. One positive trend of the 1940s was an increase in academic research on cross-cultural topics, notably by Clyde Kluckhohn and the Leightons, and supported by bia Commissioner John Collier. In 1955, the bia turned over control of Indian healthcare to the Public Health Service.

The strength of Davies's book lies in the documentation of the subsequent [End Page 879] four decades. He gives us not only a picture of the ways in which Western biomedical institutions, structures, and practices were implemented on the Navajo reservation, but also a good sense of the changing health care status of the Navajo population. We learn, in the words of many different individuals, what it was like to experience both sides of the interaction between biomedicine and traditional healing during this critical period. Huge discrepancies in basic health indicators between the Navajo and the American average had been documented prior to 1950, but in the following two decades, rises in Navajo health status became evident. This shift may be attributed to the efforts toward self-determination made by the Navajo tribal council and the traditional healers themselves. Davies underscores the importance of traditional healing practices for the health of Navajo culture in its entirety...

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