A Different Medicine: Postcolonial Healing in the Native American Church

215 Pages·2013·4.862 MB·English

by  Joseph D. Calabrese

Title Pages
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
A Different Medicine: Postcolonial Healing in the Native
American Church
Joseph D. Calabrese
Print publication date: 2013
Print ISBN-13: 9780199927722
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2013
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199927722.001.0001
Title Pages
A Different Medicine A DIFFERENT MEDICINE
(p.ii)
Series Editors
Ronald Grimes
Ute Hüsken, University of Oslo
Eric Venbrux, Radboud University Nijmegen
THE PROBLEM OF RITUAL EFFICACY
Edited by William S. Sax, Johannes Quack, and Jan Weinhold
PERFORMING THE REFORMATION
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Title Pages
Public Ritual in the City of Luther
Barry Stephenson
RITUAL, MEDIA, AND CONFLICT
Edited by Ronald L. Grimes, Ute Hüsken, Udo Simon, and Eric Venbrux
KNOWING BODY, MOVING MIND
Ritualizing and Learning at Two Buddhist Centers
Patricia Q. Campbell
SUBVERSIVE SPIRITUALITIES
How Rituals Enact the World
Frédérique Apffel-Marglin
NEGOTIATING RITES
Edited by Ute Hüsken and Frank Neubert
THE DANCING DEAD
Ritual and Religion among the Kapsiki/Higi of North Cameroon and Northeastern
Nigeria
Walter E.A. van Beek
LOOKING FOR MARY MAGDALENE
Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity at Catholic Shrines in France
Anna Fedele
THE DYSFUNCTION OF RITUAL IN EARLY CONFUCIANISM
Michael David Kaulana Ing
A DIFFERENT MEDICINE
Postcolonial Healing in the Native American Church
Joseph D. Calabrese
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Title Pages
(p.iv)
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© Joseph D. Calabrese 2013
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Title Pages
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Calabrese, Joseph D.
A different medicine: postcolonial healing in the Native American
Church / Joseph D. Calabrese.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–992784–5 (pbk. : alk. paper) – ISBN 978–0–19–
992772–2
(hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Native American Church. 2. Peyotism.
3. Indians of North America—Religion. 4. Indians of North America—
Medicine. 5. Navajo Indians—Religion. 6. Navajo Indians—Medical care.
7. Navajo Indians—Rites and ceremonies. I. Title.
E98.R3C35 2013
299.7—dc23
2012035237
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Preface
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
A Different Medicine: Postcolonial Healing in the Native
American Church
Joseph D. Calabrese
Print publication date: 2013
Print ISBN-13: 9780199927722
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2013
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199927722.001.0001
(p.vii) Preface
Hard to Swallow: The Challenge of Radical Cultural Differences
IT IS SEPTEMBER 1998. I have returned to the Navajo reservation, taking a break from
a clinical training year at the University of Chicago Hospitals to visit Navajo friends and
attend a conference on Traditional and Western Medicine in the Northern Navajo town of
Shiprock. The conference is in the gym of a local high school. I have just finished my own
presentation, describing my studies of clinical care among the Navajos, and I am
attending the traditional Navajo food sampling event. As I make my way down the serving
line, I am suddenly shocked and stop to contemplate what is in front of me: a tray full of
blackened, whole-roasted prairie dogs (a traditional Navajo delicacy as I had just
discovered).1 I notice that my response is simultaneously mental and physical, combining
astonishment with revulsion in a way that I find fascinating.
“Study that!” the Navajo food server suddenly interjects with glee, displaying
characteristic Navajo wit as he gestures at the charred rodent bodies with his tongs.
After a moment of deliberation, I shrug and extend my plate. As I munch on prairie dog
meat back at my chair with my Navajo friends and former clinical coworkers, I reflect on
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Preface
the experience. This is what the ethnographer ideally does: approaches radically different
and often seemingly unhealthy or distasteful cultural experiences with an open and self-
reflective mind in an attempt to extend intercultural understanding. Ethnographers
answer the challenge “study that!” as so memorably stated by this Navajo man. Rather
than sidestep the cultural difference, ethnographers immerse themselves in it. Rather
than sticking to initial gut reactions, which are often saturated with cultural assumptions,
(p.viii) ethnographers tend to question them. This questioning process leads
ethnographers to many interesting and informative predicaments, such as mine at the
Navajo food tasting event. Prairie dog did not become my favorite treat. However, I
learned that eating rodent meat is not as bad as I thought it would be. And I learned
something about the hunter-gatherer past of the Navajos in a uniquely experiential way.
I begin with this short ethnographic vignette from my field notes because, for me, this
story is emblematic not only of the brute fact of cultural differences but also of the
powerful experiences of shock and revulsion that they can elicit and how these reactions
can be interpreted as reflecting mere common sense (in areas of health or morality, for
example). These experiences often reveal deep cultural paradigm clashes rather than
deviations from some universal “common sense” reality. Given their potential to foster
intercultural discord, social injustice, and even ethnocentric violence, these clashes cry
out for detailed study wherever they arise. As my ethnographic vignette illustrates,
experiences of cultural difference can also be opportunities to stop and reflect. Unsettling
experiences often throw us into the sort of reflexive state that can allow us to take a step
back from our own cultural assumptions and analyze their roots. In this process, what
one had understood to be “common sense” may be called into question or even replaced
by an enlarged field of possible alternatives. To illustrate this, I will narrate my own
process of reflection on the “semantic network”2 mediating my initial reaction to my
prairie dog snack. This took the form of a self-questioning:
Why is the idea of eating prairie dog distasteful to me? Is it because human
consumption of rodent meat is universally unhealthy? There are, admittedly, many
historical reasons for Euro-Americans to assume this is so, from the filthy and rat-
infested alleys of contemporary large cities to the bubonic plague, spread by rats in
the Middle Ages. But a mental association that is accurate (or merely functional) in
one cultural context may be completely irrelevant in another. An alley full of plague-
carrying city rats is not the history of the desert-dwelling Navajos and their free-
range prairie dogs. Here, rodents were wild game rather than pest. Maybe they
weren’t the preferred food of the Navajos but they no doubt helped the Navajos
survive through some lean seasons, and thus are valorized. And after all, is it so
different a meal than the more culturally familiar rabbit? I conclude that the
revulsion arises primarily from the (p.ix) projection of distinctly Euro-American
realities onto another cultural context to which these realities do not apply.
Here we see that cultural paradigm clashes are not merely elements of a sociocultural
theory. They are brute facts of reality that press on us the need to make a decision: do I
do that or do I not? Do I follow my Navajo friends in consuming prairie dog or do I follow
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Preface
my preconceptions, conclude that it is unhealthy, and refuse it? And how do I judge
those who engage in practices that I reject?
I faced a similar situation of choice in relation to a cultural paradigm clash when I attended
my first Sweat Lodge ritual, led by the elderly Road Man (a ritual leader of the Native
American Church) whose rural family I lived with during the summer of 1990. Here the
clash in question was between different cultural paradigms related to intense heat and
physical discomfort. In a Sweat Lodge ritual, heated stones are placed into a pit in a small
hut. Water is often poured on the rocks to produce steam. The small earthen Sweat
Lodge that was built on the family’s rural ranch was barely large enough for the Road
Man, his two grandsons, and me. This was a traditional Navajo Sweat Lodge rather than
the Sioux-style intertribal sweat. The searing heat was unlike anything I had experienced.
The discomfort was intense and close proximity to the red-hot stones resulted in several
leg burns. My decision in this case was not to stay and explore the paradigm clash but
instead to bolt from the Sweat Lodge fearing for my life. However, even given this
beginning, my ability to sit in a Sweat Lodge improved over the years of my Navajo
fieldwork. My fear of the Sweat Lodge decreased as my appreciation for it increased. I
could even look forward to the comments about my “White Man” status, such as the
usual joke by my friend and teacher Hoskie: “One of you needs more browning.”
Just as experiences of culture clash often force the individual to make a personal decision,
societies faced with cultural diversity also choose which practices to tolerate and which to
outlaw. Each nation fashions its own balance of multicultural tolerance and forced
assimilation to the dominant culture based on its own criteria. This often occurs in the
context of polarized discourses in which those in power ethnocentrically cling to their own
cultural prejudices as providing the “correct” answers to life while those from
contrasting cultural backgrounds may claim that virtually any traditional practice, even a
harmful practice, is vital to cultural survival and dignity. However, researchers in the
social and clinical sciences can (p.x) and should draw important rational distinctions
between different forms of cultural practice. For example, cultural practices through
which one class of people within the society disempowers or seriously harms another
class of people can be considered human rights violations and, as such, have no place in a
liberal democracy no matter how culturally valued they are. Conversely, a special ethical
issue is raised by traditional forms of therapeutic intervention that can be shown to
support health, social harmony, or effective socialization for members of the group in
question. Even when these practices offend the sensibilities of the dominant culture, if
they can be shown to support health without causing significant harm, there is a strong
ethical case that they should be tolerated. Given the divergent cultural paths of human
development, including unique local approaches to understanding and maintaining health,
the right to access culturally appropriate therapeutic modalities may be more of an
imperative than freedom of religion or other rights. Instead of advocating clinical
imperialism, the most ethical approach might be to understand cultural differences in
treatment expectations and systems of intervention and, in addition to offering the best of
modern biomedical health care, work to support diverse social groups in their own
efforts at self-healing.
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