Book Review

Navajo Trading: The End of an Era. By Willow Roberts Powers. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001. xiv + 282 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)

This brace of books covers topics—Navajo health care and trading—that have played major roles in the tribe's development. In the first study, Wade Davies, a historian, argues that Navajos "have found ways to combine the benefits of many forms of healing to care for their minds and bodies" (p. ix). Essentially, Davies concentrates on how Western medicine and Navajo healing ceremonies and herbal medicines since 1940 have come to complement each other.	1
The author early on skillfully summarizes Navajos' traditional outlook on sickness and healing. In particular, he stresses that Navajo healing was holistic and closely related to education, family ties, politics, and religion. Davies also notes that older Navajos sought to maintain their health by vigorous exercise, diet, sweats, and herbs. However, they saw nothing wrong with borrowing other medical traditions if they seemed effective.	2
In chapter two, the author deals with the introduction of Western medicine from 1864 to 1940. Traders and missionaries, according to Davies, first brought white health care, but after 1900, government doctors became the most dominant force. By the 1920s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) operated four hospitals and a tuberculosis sanitarium that badly failed to meet Navajos' health needs. White doctors and BIA officials, however, bitterly opposed Navajo healing ceremonies. Indeed, one superintendent in the early twentieth century arrested several Navajos for conducting such rites.	3
Davies examines several trends that overcame such prejudice and generally helped to improve Navajo care. Annie Wauneka, a Navajo Council member first elected in 1951, worked tirelessly to reduce high tuberculosis rates. She convinced patients to seek treatment and lobbied council members, reservation health providers, and Washington officials to fight the health menace. In dealing with the same period, Davies does an excellent job of discussing Navajo medical programs in the context of national Indian affairs, especially the transfer of health care from the BIA to the Public Health Service. Davies also shows that Navajo leaders have gradually assumed more control over health programs. This produced a greater tolerance for traditional healing. Part of Davies's most interesting discussion is about the growing shortage of healers and the Navajo Nation's efforts to recruit replacements. Despite new problems such as HIV, diabetes, and alcoholism, Davies indicates that health care has definitely improved in recent decades.	4
Davies deserves high marks for this study. He is well grounded in the secondary literature and primary sources. He organizes his material skillfully and writes with clarity, focus, and nuance. Although he obviously sympathizes with the Navajos, he maintains an objective perspective. In short, this is a strong study that outside health providers should read before starting work among the Navajos.	. . .