Healing Ways

Since the end of World War II, Navajo healing traditions have slowly been integrated into the Western medical institutions that serve the Dine. Focusing on the post-World War II period, Davies's detailed study begins where Robert Trennert's 'White Man's Medicine' (1998), the only other general history of Western medicine among the Navajo, ends. Chronicling the advent of so-called 'western' or 'scientific' medicine in the modern era, including the development of indigenous healing traditions and such new institutions as the Native American Church, Davies shows the skill and adaptability of Dine in accepting the services of physicians while keeping the work of traditional healers among their health-care options. Davies also explores contemporaneous Navajo critiques of both 'high-tech' and traditional health-care modes, detailing Navajo battles to integrate their healing practices into government and private health-care systems.