Disease Change and the Role of Medicine: The Navajo Experience

4. Traditional Navajo Health Beliefs and Practices

4 Traditional Navajo Health Beliefs and Practices NAVAJO RELIGION THROUGHOUT the greater Southwest it has been observed that "in spite of the complex intertwining of ideas, two separate lines of religious practice can . . . be followed out. Oversimplified, they are as follows: The agriculturists tend to develop communal ceremonies, the hunters, personal religious participation" (Underhill 1948:viii). Traditional Navajo religion is an amalgam of these two lines, for the Navajos, originally hunters from the north, mixed with the Pueblos, especially after the rebellion of 1680, and adopted many features of Pueblo religion. Navajo religion is directed toward the maintenance of harmonious relationships between man, nature, and the supernaturals. As illness is a major indicator of disharmony, Navajo religious ritual is predominantly health oriented. This is congruent with the emphasis of hunters upon personal religious participation focused upon the health and well-being of the individual. There are many references to crops in the rituals,"but Navahoceremonialism does not show the intense preoccupation with maize and its life cycle which characterizes the true farming peoples" (Underhill 1948:x). It has also been observed that hunters seek visionaryexperiences and often have shamans whose powers are divinely received rather than acquired through years of apprenticeship. "The pattern of agriculturalceremonies," by contrast,"tends to Traditional Navajo Health Beliefs / 119 create standardized ritual with an hereditary officiant, whose power is not the result of a visionbut of memorizing a formula, both in words and behavior" (Underbill 1948:viii). Again Navajo ceremonialism is an amalgam.The most prestigious figure in the hierarchy of religious practitioners is the singer, whose knowledge of a particular ritual isgained over long years of apprenticeship with another practitioner. Below him is the diviner, whose abilityto diagnose illnessor other troubles isa gift. Upon making a diagnosis, such an individual may refer a patient to a singer, who performs the ceremony appropriate for the diagnosis. In some instances, the Diviner and Singer maybe one and the same individual (Reichard 1963). It is reasonable to suppose that the singer is a reflection of the Pueblo influence, whereas the diviner is a lineal descendent of the shaman of the hunter tradition (Luckert 1975). In many Navajo communities there are also herbalists and bone setters, people with empirical knowledge about more or less effective ways to treat any number of common complaints and symptoms. As shall be discussed in more detail later, Navajos in the past have often equated physicians with herbalists from whom they seek symptomaticrelief, whilestill continuing tohave traditional Navajoceremonies to cure the underlying condition. It is generally agreed that the number of singers has been declining on the reservation. In a careful study of the Kaibeto Plateau, Henderson (1982:167ff.) reports that there was 1singer for every 30 people in the area from 1900 through the 1930s.By 1980, however, there was only one for every 175 people. Not only had the population increased from 600 to 4,244 in that time but the number of singers had decreased steadilysince the 1950s. Presently the number of practicingsingers isabout the same asit was at the turn of the century.Of 70 singers wholivedin the area between 1860 and 1981, 51 (73 percent) were born before 1900 and only 2 (3 percent) were born after 1930. Moreover, those singers alive today knew fewer ceremonies than did those of earlier years. There is also some evidence that several sings have become extinct and that the ceremonies now performed are increasingly the short one- and three-night versions of longer ceremonies. The reasons for these developments are straightforward : "To learn a chant requires that a man beon the reservation . . . for long periods of time. It also requires leisure and the 120 I Traditional Navajo Health Beliefs ability to pay the teacher" (Aberle 1966:20If.). As reliance on wage work increases at the expense of stock raising, it becomes almost impossible for young men to meet these conditions. Ultimately, education and the demands of the wage work economy will be the nemesis of the traditional healing system. For the present, however, there are several developments that suggest that a period of adaptation and innovation has begun. Since 1970 the Navajo Healing Arts Training Program, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, has trained some ninety individuals from the central part of the reservation. Because an undetermined number of these trainees were already qualified singers when they entered the program, it is not clear just how many...