Premium
Identity and Healing in Three Navajo Religious Traditions: Sa'ah Naagháí Bik'eh Hózho
Author(s) -
Lewton Elizabeth L.,
Bydone Victoria
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
medical anthropology quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.855
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1548-1387
pISSN - 0745-5194
DOI - 10.1525/maq.2000.14.4.476
Subject(s) - navajo , harmony (color) , kinship , identity (music) , sociology , heaven , christianity , gender studies , psychology , aesthetics , anthropology , religious studies , history , art , philosophy , archaeology , linguistics , visual arts
In this article, we elucidate how the Navajo synthetic principle Saah Naagháí Bik'eh Hózho (SNBH) is understood, demonstrated, and elaborated in three different Navajo healing traditions. We conducted interviews with Navajo healers and their patients affiliated with Traditional Navajo religion, the Native American Church, and Pentecostal Christianity. Their narratives provide access to cultural themes of identity and healing that invoke elements of SNBH. SNBH specifies that the conditions for health and well‐being are harmony within and connection to the physical/spiritual world. Specifically, each religious healing tradition encourages affective engagement, proper family relations, an understanding of one's cultural and spiritual histories, and the use of kinship terms to establish affective bonds with one's family and with the spiritual world. People's relationships within this common behavioral environment are integral to their self‐orientations, to their identities as Navajos, and to the therapeutic process. The disruption and restoration of these relationships constitute an important affective dimension in Navajo distress and healing. [Navajos, identity, religion, healing, health]