Ritual Healing and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Navajo Society

Abstract

My point of departure is the intersection of three heavily traveled conceptual highways that wind across American anthropology. The first is ritual healing, which has preoccupied anthropology as religion, performance, therapy, and, broadly speaking, as cultural process (Csordas and Kleinman 1996;Dow 1986;Kleinman 1980;Levi-Strauss 1966). The second is identity politics-that is, the deployment of representation and mobilization of community within plural societies in the name of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, or religion-which in recent years, has captured the attention of scholars in both cultural anthropology and interdisciplinary cultural studies (Calhoun 1994;Friedman 1992;Giddens 1990; Lash and Friedman 1992). The third is Navajo society, which remains one of the most heavily documented, most frequently plundered for ethnographic examples, and most irritated by the persistent probing of anthropologists of all stripes (Farella 1984;Kluckhohn and Leighton 1946;Lamphere 1977;Witherspoon 1977). In this article, I elaborate the relation between ritual healing and identity politics in contemporary Navajo society by presenting a conceptual framework that can potentially be applied across a wider range of societies.What is the purpose of questioning the relation between ritual healing and identity politics? Doing so allows me to address in specific fashion the perennial issue of the relation between religion and politics, both of which are forms of power but with ostensibly different motives and modes of operation (Fogelson and Adams 1977). It allows me to address the parallel issues of the individual in relation to the collective and of microsocial in relation to macrosocial 20 american ethnologist

Religiosity and Spiritual Engagement in Two American Indian Populations

“…For example, a recent article in the American Journal of Public Health described a program promoting an "integrated healing approach" implemented among the Yavapai of Arizona, which included prayer and participation in religious ceremonies such as sweat lodges (Napoli 2002). Other programs incorporate activities such as vision questing and meditation, increasingly with active participation by American Indian ceremonialists and traditional healers (Abbott 1998;Baird-Olson and Ward 2000;Csordas 2000;Edwards 2003;Mehl-Madrona 1999;Sanchez-Way and Johnson 2000).…”

“…Ethnographic and autobiographical accounts of American Indian religion and spirituality suggest a complex mix of at least three sets of beliefs and practices: aboriginal traditions, Christian, and “new” or syncretic faiths that fuse aboriginal and Christian elements (Baird‐Olson and Ward 2000; Begay and Maryboy 2000; Csordas 1999; Gill 1982). We offer a description of each.…”

“…At the same time, other American Indians find Christian beliefs fully compatible with aboriginal ones and express commitments to both (Csordas 1999; Martin 2001:75–78, 82; Treat 1996). One author even described this “bireligious” impulse as the “normative stance,” at least among one of the larger Plains tribes (Vecsey 1999:63; cf.…”

Commentary on “Elements of Psychotherapy in Navaho Religion”: Navaho Healing and the Origins of the Psychotherapy Analogy

“…Meanwhile, in the years since the Leightons' article, first appeared, anthropologists have learned to understand the presence of multiple forms of healing, not in terms of inevitable acculturation and extinction of indigenous healing but as part of a society's "health care system" (Kleinman, 1980) in which professional, folk, and popular systems interact with one another and which offer a plurality of treatment options. My own work in the Navajo Healing Project (Csordas, 2000) emphasized the interaction not only of traditional Navajo healing, but also of Native American Church peyote healing and Navajo Christian faith healing with conventional biomedical treatment within the health care system of contemporary Navajo society. In this context, the vision expressed in the article's final paragraph of collaboration in which "Singers can be accorded the rating and respect of chaplains" has in fact come to pass.…”

“…With respect to the Navajo in particular, recent decades have seen a number of approaches that take into account various aspects of healing relevant to an experiential understanding (Levy, Neutra, and Parker, 1995;Sandner, 1991;Schwarz 2003). My own multi-year study in the Navajo Healing Project, with the collaboration of a team of researchers including psychiatrist Michael Storck, has explicitly examined experiential commentaries of participants in healing ceremonies, adapting methods of psychotherapy process research in combination with interpretive cultural analysis (Csordas 2000(Csordas , 2002Csordas, Storck, & Strauss, 2008).…”