Oxford University Press, USA
A Different Medicine: Postcolonial Healing in the Native American Church
A Different Medicine: Postcolonial Healing in the Native American Church
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Drawing on two years of ethnographic field research among the Navajos, this book explores a controversial Native American ritual and healthcare practice: ceremonial consumption of the psychedelic Peyote cactus in the context of an indigenous postcolonial healing movement called the Native
American Church (NAC). The NAC arose in the nineteenth century in response to the creation of the reservation system and increasing societal ills, including alcoholism. The movement is the locus of a cultural conflict with a long history in North America and stirs very strong and often opposed
emotions and moral interpretations. Joseph D. Calabrese describes the Peyote Ceremony as it is used in family contexts and federally funded clinical programs for Native American patients. He uses an interdisciplinary methodology that he calls clinical ethnography: an approach to research that
involves clinically informed and self-reflective immersion in local worlds of suffering, healing, and normality. Calabrese combined immersive fieldwork among NAC members in their communities with a year of clinical work at a Navajo-run treatment program for adolescents with severe substance abuse
and associated mental health problems. There he had the unique opportunity to provide conventional therapeutic intervention alongside Native American therapists who were treating the very problems that the NAC addresses through ritual. Calabrese argues that if people respond better to clinical
interventions that are relevant to their society's unique cultural adaptations and ideologies (as seems to be the case with the NAC), then preventing ethnic minorities from accessing traditional ritual forms of healing may actually constitute a human rights violation.
Author: Joseph D. Calabrese
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 04/26/2013
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780199927845
Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2013
American Church (NAC). The NAC arose in the nineteenth century in response to the creation of the reservation system and increasing societal ills, including alcoholism. The movement is the locus of a cultural conflict with a long history in North America and stirs very strong and often opposed
emotions and moral interpretations. Joseph D. Calabrese describes the Peyote Ceremony as it is used in family contexts and federally funded clinical programs for Native American patients. He uses an interdisciplinary methodology that he calls clinical ethnography: an approach to research that
involves clinically informed and self-reflective immersion in local worlds of suffering, healing, and normality. Calabrese combined immersive fieldwork among NAC members in their communities with a year of clinical work at a Navajo-run treatment program for adolescents with severe substance abuse
and associated mental health problems. There he had the unique opportunity to provide conventional therapeutic intervention alongside Native American therapists who were treating the very problems that the NAC addresses through ritual. Calabrese argues that if people respond better to clinical
interventions that are relevant to their society's unique cultural adaptations and ideologies (as seems to be the case with the NAC), then preventing ethnic minorities from accessing traditional ritual forms of healing may actually constitute a human rights violation.
Author: Joseph D. Calabrese
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 04/26/2013
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780199927845
Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2013
About the Author
Joseph D. Calabrese heads the Medical Anthropology section at University College London. His research combines the perspectives of anthropology and clinical psychology to develop a culturally inclusive understanding of illness and healing.
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