Coyoteway: A Navajo Holyway Healing Ceremonial. KARL W. LUCKERT

Navajo Ceremonial System

Karl W. Butzer: Interdisciplinary mentor.

As his students in geography, archaeology, geology, and Latin American, African, and Middle Eastern Studies attest, you could learn more in one day in the field with Karl Butzer than you could in a semester-long course with any other professor. Karl’s fieldwork and active teaching endedMay 4, 2016. Future generations of students will learn fromKarl bymeans of his 15 books and monographs, and mo...

Diagnosis and distress in Navajo healing.

In contemporary Navajo society, traditional Navajo ceremonies, Native American Church prayer meetings, and Navajo Christian faith healing are all highly sought-after resources in the everyday pursuit of health and well-being. What is the nature of affliction among patients who turn to such forms of religious healing? Are these patients typically afflicted with psychiatric disorder? In this arti...

Rethinking the role of diagnosis in Navajo religious healing.

Diagnosis plays a central, primary role in the therapeutic process across cultures. In this article, the authors examine the role of diagnosis in two Navajo religious healing traditions, the Traditional Navajo religion and the Native American Church (NAC), and examine a case study of a diagnostic encounter between an NAC diagnostician and a Traditional patient. The authors assert that, for Nava...

Placebo studies and ritual theory: a comparative analysis of Navajo, acupuncture and biomedical healing.

Using a comparative analysis of Navajo healing ceremonials, acupuncture and biomedical treatment, this essay examines placebo studies and ritual theory as mutually interpenetrating disciplines. Healing rituals create a receptive person susceptible to the influences of authoritative culturally sanctioned 'powers'. The healer provides the sufferer with imaginative, emotional, sensory, moral and a...