external image navajo-sandpainting.jpg
A man making a sand painting.
//navajopeople.org/images/navajo-sandpainting.jpg



Diseases.

· Healing sing
· Cure someone of an apparent sickness
· Person becomes the centre of the healing sing
· Each type of sickness there is a sand painting
o Done on the floor of the Hogan the patient lives
o Many different sand painting designs
o Each design suppose to have the power to cure a certain ailment
o Depicts the masked supernatural beings that are being called on to help cure the patient
· Top of sand painting faces east
o Direction the gods are believed to come from
· Hataalii (medicine man) and helpers create sand paintings
· Made from various colourd sands
· Charcoal, cornmeal, and pollen also used
· Vary in size
· Daytime healing; sand painting begun in the morning, and then ceremony is performed, and sand painting is destroyed before sunset
· Night-time healing, sand paintings begun after sunset, and destroyed before sunrise
· Appropriate chant
· Herbal medicines
· After sand painting is completed, person being treated sits on the painting
· Healing songs sung
· Aromatic herbs are burned
· Herbal medicines administered
· Sometime includes masked dancers


From the book: The Apaches and Navajos. By: Craig A. Doherty, and Katherine M. Doherty