You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The Navaho Indians have attracted an unusually wide interest in their culture, and Donald Sandner tells us why, in this highly readable exposition of their religious life and of their healing ceremonials. Unlike many tribal societies in which a fixed culture-pattern has survived from archaic times, the Navaho culture is the result of a comparatively recent syncretism between a shamanistic hunting culture and a priestly agricultural society represented by the Pueblo Indians with whom the Navaho branch of the Athapaskan migration from the north came into a meaningful, though uneasy, relationship. Another group of Athapaskan migrants, the Apaches, were less influenced by the Pueblo culture and ‘retain much of the nomadic, visionary style’. They are in the strongest contrast to the Pueblos, where ‘curing is a function of the clans or medicine societies’. Therefore we are told that the ‘Navaho synthesis consists primarily of borrowing elements of healing from these adjacent cultures and creatively integrating them into a thoroughly unique healing system’.
Dr Sandner describes the result of this synthesis as ‘symbolic shamanism’, and he undertakes a highly original study of symbolic healing in general, comparing ancient traditional modes with modern depth psychotherapy. The result is a unique and comprehensive picture of this type of healing ritual. One reason for this is that Dr Sandner does full justice both to the thorough anthropological studies that have been made of the Navahos and to the whole range of medical depth psychologies that exist besides the Jungian, to which he officially belongs. There is a refreshing lack of specialised terminology, and the easy style of the author reflects a truly unbiased attitude. Above all, he speaks with the authority of one who has gone to the source, to the Navaho medicine men themselves, for the knowledge he imparts.
In ten chapters Sandner explores the history and development of the healing rites of the Navahos and quotes libera