Native American Religion : Medicine And Spiritual Healing

Blending old with new, traditional and modern Western medicine and treatment give the Navajo the best of both worlds culturally. Medicine from the Navajo perspective is about healing people by restoring balance and harmony to the spirit. Prayer as well as balance healing rituals like “Walking in Beauty” (O’Brien,

An increasing number of medical schools are now offering courses in alternative medicine for their students, and some hospitals already have alternative medicine departments. The availability of healers and doctors practicing holistic medicine has also increased in recent years, and more and more people are educating themselves in these new fields. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that between 65 and 80 percent of the world’s population (about 3 billion people) rely on traditional medicine as their primary form of health care.

The Native American culture is the original culture of the United States. Members of Native American tribes live throughout the country. “There are an estimated 4.9 million persons, in 565 federally recognized tribes who are classified as American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AI), alone or in combination with one or more other designated racial classifications. This demographic group compromises 1.6% of the U.S. population” (Horowitz, 2012). Wisconsin is home to the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), Ojibwa (Chippewa), and the Potawatomi tribes (“American”, 2014). It is important for nurses within this state, as well as any other state, to understand the Native American belief system in order to provide a quality healthcare experience. Nurses are the primary point of contact in the healthcare setting. Client advocacy is one of the nurse’s major roles. Therefore, the nurse should have the highest level of diversity understanding for the cultures within the local region.

erosion of the Aboriginal culture.(chp.2). Restrictions placed on the cultural practices of the Aboriginal people ultimately led to the abatement of the Aboriginal traditional medicines.(p88). Losing their freedom to practice traditional therapeutics, the Aboriginal people eventually had to adapt to the culturally inappropriate ways of western medicines. The purpose of this paper is to examine the advantages of Aboriginal healing methods for the Aboriginal people, as well as to explain why these traditional methods continued to persist long after western style medicines were introduced.

The healing rituals in the Navajo tribes included the spiritual healing rituals, which are a type of medicine or cure, which is believed to be being assisted by the spirits (Vogel 338). The Native Americans believed so much in these rituals especially the Navajo were the most community that believed in the capacity of this spiritual ritual healing. These healing influenced by the medium, which was the medicine, operate whom known as Shaman who would perform these rituals and will be able to heal a sick person. This paper will focus mainly on the beliefs, ceremonies and ritual events that were believed by the Navajo one of the Native Indians to treat their patients. It also argues ways and methods the Navajo used for their

Native Americans who occupied the land before the arrival of the Europeans possessed a vast knowledge of botanical medicines that intrigued the newcomers. The natives mixed roots, herbs, and plants to cure various medical maladies. Healing for the natives were not just herbal remedies,

In the first synthesis essay, examination of worldview was identified as one of the most important concepts necessary to understand and interpret medical anthropology. Worldview is the reason that there are many different types of medical systems. As explained in lecture, these include diagnosis, healing, and some form of payment to the healer. The study of these different medical systems falls under the term ethnomedicine. Singer describes ethnomedicine as the idea that all medical systems develop from “particular sociocultural systems regardless of the scale of the society.” For example our US healthcare system, based on western worldview, is a hierarchy of administrators who tell the doctors what they can and cannot do. Our devotion to the US healthcare system stems from our need to label the symptom or disease such as nasal drip and a cough can be labeled as a common cold. The worldview seen here is the need for immediate cures to avoid interrupting our busy lives. On the other hand, in “Touching the Timeless” with Billy Yellow from the Navajo tribe, there are many steps to prepare for his healing ritual such as the sweat hogan, where purification rituals are performed, in this case, before a strong spiritual ritual can be done. Thus understanding the worldview that comes with the development of medical systems is vital to understanding why the practices are being used and being able to compare these medical systems cross culturally.

Humanity’s approach to medicine, illness, and disease have been changing over time. Early use of medicine was discovered in Ancient Egypt, Babylonia, India, China, Greece, and Rome. Prehistoric medicine incorporated plants, animal parts, and minerals as a source of medicine. In most cases, these materials were used as magical substances by priests and shamans. Some spiritual systems include animism, spiritualism, shamanism, and divination.

Consuming natural remedies to recover from ailments appeared to be a very significant and common practice amongst enslaved African Americans and Native Americans. In the article Indians, Europeans and the New World Disease, Calloway thoroughly describes how the native American people were accustomed to plant life, therefore used nature and wildlife to their advantage to create healing remedies. African American slaves also used plants to make tea. These means were extremely excellent precautions for preventing illnesses or for fighting one.

Similarly, American Indian Medicine believes that people are closely related to nature which is similar to Ayurveda culture. Also, the American Indian Medicine feels as the destiny of humanity, of trees, sky, and oceans are all associated. The treatments in American Indian Medicine include services and ceremonies. Another form of medicine is Curanderismo. It is a Mexican-American way of healing their societies. In Spanish, the verb “curar” means “to heal.” This form of medicine has three levels of treatment and they consist of spiritual, material and mental. African Medicine is related to American Indian Medicine as well as Ayurveda because they both use herbs and believe that they are linked to nature. African tribes treat people by seeking

Native American Spirituality is a guide developed by the Manataka American Indian Council to support and provide information to public and private establishments in education, health care, or any other sector about Native Americans religion and practice. This guide introduces aspects of Native American religion and how each sector should expect, appropriately respond to, and provide support. The right to practice religion, including Native American religion, is protected under the U.S. Constitution, and other legislation. The guide specifically references this legislation, which includes the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. Native American Spirituality established

The Natives of California distinguish plants and animals into diverse locations of botany and zoology . They learn to cultivate throughout the views of animals and by creating a food chain that benefited the tribe. Many native tribes observed the environmental system that either made other species survive and extinct. The natives were considered to be curious about the environment they lived that prepared them want to learn, observe, and practice rituals. The natives were uninformed that religious ritual such as coordinating the sun and moon movement was practical rituals of much groundwork for collecting food and building supplies. Like many other American native groups they established and discover valuable properties of plants. Using kernels, plant roots, tree barks and herbal leaves as curative purposes. As the native embarked a lot of nature resources there were many that are ineffective and some are used in today’s modern medicine.

As stated above due to my mother’s psotionality I have been exposed to both natural medicine and criticism on such views, but many others grew up with severely negative or dismissive teachings and views. This brought out a type of curiosity that only increased throughout my schooling, specifically what do people believe and what were they taught. Thus, the purpose of my paper is to discover what stereotypes are known and believed to be associated with Indigenous medicine and how does familiarity with the topic influence these views. The study looks at variables such as positionality as well as relationships to the teachings, allowing for an accurate depiction without making any assumptions. This will allow me to analyze with as little bias

In Rupert Ross’s novel, entitled, “Indigenous Healing: Exploring Traditional Paths”, he explores the indigenous point of view. More specifically, Ross looks at the meaning of living relationally, the circular vison culture, the impacts of colonialism of the western world on First Nations people, as well as how to bring awareness to non-native people of the tragedies that Aboriginals have and are still going through.

Art and Religion are utilized by Haitian culture for healing and survive in the Caribbean communities (Davis, Paravisini-Gebert, & Fernandez Olmos, 2004). “Healing Cultures is more self-consciously pan-Caribbean in scope, sensitive not only to the region's historical intersections, but also taking into account the ways in which cultures rely on each other and are reinterpreted across borders” (Davis et al., 2004, p. 1). The term “Healing Arts” is used to explain the cures utilized by Haitian culture for healing of illness that are physical, psychological and even spiritual (Davis et al., 2004). For instance the use vodou practices. Haitian vodou functions in the following way: “offers a cultural construction of illness, provides elements