Customer Reviews

Healing Ways: Navajo Health Care in the Twentieth Century

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I found this book to be helpful in understanding cultural differences not just between Western society and Navajos but other cultures as well. As someone who works as a volunteer with refugees from several different countries, the information in the book has given me a greater incentive to be more tolerant and understanding with the reservations that people of other backgrounds have to some of our medical practices and government procedures. I especially enjoyed the anecdotes collected by the author of personal experiences and opinions of Navajos.

This is a well-written study of a topic that really hasn't been dealt with in such thorough detail before. In fact, this is the only book I've been able to find anywhere about Navajo health care after World War II. I was impressed by the author's extensive use of interviews with the Navajos themselves for his research, in addition to the voluminous written records he used. It's only fitting, given the Navajos' rich oral tradition, that a study of their culture should draw heavily on firsthand, oral sources.
Prof. Davies' argument that both traditional Navajo healing and Western medicine have valid and valuable contributions to make is well supported, and the idea that each has something to learn from the other is encouraging not only for the future of Navajo health care but for all of Western medicine. Overall, this is a thoroughly professional study written in a clear hand that's easily accessible to any reader, not just professors and grad students.

"Healing Ways: Navajo Health Care in the Twentieth Century" documents the development of complementary, dual Western and Dine healing traditions and services among the Navajo since World War II. The history is not always harmonious, but a gradual integration of the two main healing philosophies emerges. Author and history professor Davies highlights the determination and flexibility of Dine in "accepting the services of [Western] physicians while keeping the work of traditional healers among their health-care options."

"Healing Ways" adds to the previous work of author Robert Trennert's "White Man's Medicine (1998)," which singly covered the general history of Western medicine among the Navajo before World War II. Both histories add to the present picture of developing cooperative integrations and blendings of traditional Dine health practices into Western medical care systems. It also underlines the pervasive determination of the Dine to reshape their health care in an interactive model that both informs and educates, while preserving the best of both ways of life.

Davies' book is extremely narrow and there is no real attempt to place the Navajo's experiences in a broader context. At the most basic level, Healing Ways reads like a dissertation and not a very good one at that. There are numerous errors in the text (better copy editing and, even more importantly, a better knowledge of the field of medical history would have made this book a better and easier read). The book is pitched as a second half to White Man's Medicine---a book written by one of Davies' professors in graduate school. White Man's Medicine is a much better book and I am sorry to see Healing Ways paired with White Man's Medicine.