The Navajo Healing Project.

Abstract

The articles in this issue represent some of the first fruits of the Navajo Healing Project, a collaborative work by a group of Navajo and non-Navajo researchers dedicated to understanding the nature of the therapeutic process in contemporary Navajo religious healing. Life in Navajo land today proves the outdatedness of any simple dichotomy between tradition and modernity/postmodernity. Many of those who explicitly define themselves as traditional Navajos do so in full awareness of the contemporary context in which that identity takes on meaning, while at the same time the anomalies of modern life are often taken very much in stride by even elderly, monolingual Navajo people. One of the most striking ways in which this complexity is evident is in the large area of Navajo life in which religion and spirituality are intimately entwined with health care and healing. Indeed, healing is the central theme of Navajo religion, while the sacred is the central element in Navajo medicine. Just as Navajos orient themselves geographically within a territory defined by four sacred mountains aligned with the four cardinal points, today they orient themselves medically in a field of vital interaction among four modes of healing: conventional biomedicine, Traditional Navajo healing, Native American Church (NAC) healing, and Navajo Christian faith healing. The Navajo, or Dine, are speakers of an Athabaskan language, and their contemporary homeland is located geographically in the four-corners region where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado meet. The reservation is an institution of the U.S. federal government, its boundaries established by an imposed treaty in 1868 as the condition for the Navajos' release from captivity at Bosque Redondo, near Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico. The collective trauma of the Long Walk, their forced march into captivity following military defeat at the hands of the infamous Kit Carson, is critical to contemporary Navajos' identity as a people. According to the 1990 census, the population of the Navajo Nation was 155,276, of which 96 percent was American Indian. Although precise figures are not available, as many as another 50,000 Navajos, for a total population of roughly 200,000, may live in various other regions of the United States, many maintaining close ties to their homeland. Given the size and geographical expanse of Navajoland, it is not surprising that there exists a degree of regional cultural variation among Navajos, though this may have become less salient as more paved roads have decreased isolation over the past 20 years.