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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 19016
[Native]
Date Posted:
12/10/2007
8:30:04 am EST
Wvox Stats
Views: 5,849
RSS: 16,389
Comments: 2
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Healing Hands
Author: Alysa Landry Source: Farmington Daily Times (NM)
Title: HEALING HANDS
It starts with the sprinkling of corn pollen.
The yellow powder slips between Francis Mitchell's fingers as he stretches over a makeshift altar in a small bedroom in his Farmington home. Feathers, crystals and arrowheads are precisely set on the carpet.
Mitchell, a Navajo medicine man, sits cross-legged in the corner, a yellow bandana tied around his head and turquoise bracelets circling his wrists. A patient and his son — travelers from the Jicarilla Apache tribe — perch on sheepskins nearby. They are victims of a curse or evil spell.
"I'm going to say a prayer and make an offering," Mitchell says. "I'm going to ask the deity to take the bad thing away."
Tendrils of smoke rise from a nest of smoldering incense, and Mitchell fans the sweet odor with an eagle feather. The extraction ceremony will take about two hours, he says. Tthen he will dismiss his visitors with a protection prayer.
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Community Thoughts: There are 2 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Very Well Done! | Dec 10th. at 11:58:34 am EST
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Silverwing (Colorado Springs, Colorado) - Email Me
This article was well written and seems to have come from a writer who understood the subject. Very refreshing and I hope lots of people who are unfamiliar with Shamanism read it and think about it.
I noticed a couple lines in this article that restate something that comes up over and over again, Shamanism notwithstanding.
Mr. Mitchell had mentioned how he was brought up by a Christian minister who taught him how bad these practices are. Once again, I read the same lesson in this article. It said:
"The traditional songs struck a familiar chord, and Mitchell found similarities between Navajo culture and the Christianity he embraced as a child in Ohio.
"They're both about reaching a supreme being," he said. "Navajo ceremonies are just another way of understanding the deity."
It amazes me how many times we have heard or experienced this lesson, only to see folks blindfold themselves to it as they exist in their own cocoon of ignorance and fear. The denial of the lesson has to be deliberate. The acceptance of the lesson will need to be deliberate too.
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