Medicine Men of Oglala Sioux Indians of Nebraska Essay

The  Oglala medicine men belong to the Sioux Indian Community in Manderson, Potato Creek, Kyle, Oglala, No. 4, Red Shirt Table, Wanblee. This Indian Tribe in Nebraska is watched over by a branch of the Office of Indian Affairs located within its territory. Civilizations have used different ways of curing their sick. The bible states that Jesus cured the sick by using miracles. The Chinese cure their sick using reflexology, acupuncture as well as the taking of the root of the plant ginseng. The American doctors use manufactured drugs like Tylenol or Aspirins to cure the pains of their patients. Admittedly, the different ways of curing the sick has been handed down from generation to generation. In fact, in some countries, the faith healers believe that they have the inner power to heal the sick if their patients will have faith in the doctors. Currently, many born again fellowships are centered on a pastor who cures the cancers (Aldredge-Clanton 11), diabetes, high blood and lets the invalid throw away his crutches because he can now walk. This type of healing is called miracle healing where the pastor impresses on the minds of their church members that Jesus and around and will remove their affliction. The following paragraphs explains the uniqueness of the Oglala Sioux Indians of Nebraska as they go about their daily festive activity of maintaining the community’s health by curing the ailments and the sufferings of their Indian neighbors. BODY His role in the community The role of the medical doctors or so called healers is to cure the sick and alleviate the pain of the dying Indian person. The healer brings hope the suffering and pain of their Indian neighbors. And the healers include in their medical armory the Sun Dance. The Sun Dance is the ritual part of the Indian doctors’ healing procedure. This dance is performed during the midsummer and indeed that most intricately complex part of the Indian healers curative process. Thus, their role in the community is to heal the patients using many processes. One such process is the ritual method. For, ritual and reciprocal communication between the patient and the medicine men and women is designed to start a biological and social rhythm motion through by influencing the neurophysiologial structures of the patients’ ailed body parts. Likewise, the Indian medicine man’s way of curing their patient is blanketed with myth which includes the use of the environment in the healing process (Lewis 169). To reiterate, the medicine men’s role is to keep as many of their Indian neighbors as healthy as possible. Evidently, a healthy people would spur the community’s economy to a more frantic pace. However, a population with many sick neighbors would eat away the community’s money because the government has lesser people to spice up the community’s economy. The medicine men and women here also help the community by influencing the policy makers in their community to craft laws, ordinances and statutes that focus on maintaining the health of the Oglala Indian community of Nebraska, USA (Lewis, 41). Thus, the role that these Oglala Indian medicine men play is very important. His status The status of the Oglala American Indian of Nebraska, USA’s medicine men and women here is such that they are being trusted and asked for advices in terms of health. In fact, many politicians in their community approve of the teachings and activities of the medicine. This is their way of enticing the medicine men and women to recommend to their patients, friends and every day contacts to vote for the politician and to support him or her plans and programs for the Oglala Indian community. Unquestionably, their major role is to keep the people healthy. (Lewis 71). For, these medicine men of Oglala, Nebraska exude an air of authority for what they tell their patients to do will often be done in most cases because the patients want to live longer. His knowledge The Oglala medicine men and medicine women are mostly comprised of senior citizens who started their medicine practice late or after the prime of their life. For, they had to gather enough experiences in life as well as theoretical knowledge that will give them necessary medical knowledge as they take up administrative positions in their Indian tribe. Many of the older women and men of the Oglala Sioux Indian settlement absorbed all they could to gain expertise in the field of medical practice that included the use of herbs as medicines. Specifically, many of the medical practitioners of this small United States tribe specialized in the study of the symptoms, causes and the herbal cures for various diseases. Also, some of the medicine men and women generally studied how to cure the physical and mind -related sickness (Lewis, 10). The Oglala medicine men are generally well versed in terms of which herbal plants will be very effective in alleviating many of the health risks of their constituents. Beliefs, and similar type of information that relates to the Medicine men. The people of the Oglala Indian settlement believe that some ritual songs can hasten the healing process. One such popular song is the Oglala’s Indian song. This magical song is believed to sprinkle the patients with the powder of cure. The Indian medicine men believe that this song is embodied with syncretistic and revivalist. For, this song brings out the embodiment of syncreustic and revivalistic elements of the Sioux faith and Pan –Indian movements. The Indian medicine men and women believe that the current ailments afflicting their constituents were caused by their intermingling with the White Americans. For, they believed that the normal Indian was healthy before these whites visited them and imprisoned them in Indian settlements. Thus, the present Indian sickness have been brought about by their change in lifestyles. For, The Indians freely roamed the prairie and other lands as they followed where the roaming animals would go during the pre –white days. This lifestyle had been cut because the whites placed them inside their Indian settlements for fear they Indians would endanger the lives of the Whites. The Indian healers believed that the Whites had forced them to live in log cabins. This is what caused their health to deteriorate to the level of the white’s health conditions. Also, the Indian lifestyles of free roaming of the desserts to search for their main dish of buffalo meat to their new log cabins resulted to a crowded home and school (Carter 103). Thus, their physical power to repel viruses and bacteria that is the root cause of many of the unhealthiness continues to this day. For, the Indians believed that living in their teepees ( Indian tent houses) brought them good health (Fletcher 81). Reference ceremonies or events the medicine men conducts or participates in. The medicine men and the medicine women of the Oglala Sioux Indian settlement studied how some of the herbs cropping up around their community could alleviate or even eradicate some or all their community members’ ailments. This also includes other mundane treatments of many of the diseases plaguing the Indian Territory. Also, the Oglala medicine men conducted their normal Sun Dance in their community to usher in health into their community. In addition, the medicine men and women of the Oglala United States Indian reservation included in some of their jobs to cure their fellow Indian tribesmen and tribeswomen several repertoire of what they identified as Sacred Indian songs. In fact, some of the tribe men and tribe women native doctors use a unique Indian method described as calling the healing process to start immediately. Normally, the healing process is a two way succeed. Meaning, the tribesmen and tribeswomen and their Indian patients must literally put their trust and fate in the medicine men and women to pluck them out of their pain or injustice. This trust is influenced by the strength and intensity of the medicine men, medicine women and their patients to have an unwavering conviction that their local community doctors here would cure them of their pain and suffering. Further, this only shows that the entire healing process of their local healers falls beyond man’s control and ambition. In short, the Indian healing process is classified by something clearly outside the normal realm of human control and ambitiousness. The medical training here is uniquely their own. Meaning, their medical procedures clearly run one hundred eighty degrees around the normal medical procedures that non –Indian medical practitioners use to cure or just alleviate their sick patients. Thus the long and energy sapping training that the Indians studying medicine in their local community willingly undergo in order to reach the prestigious status in their locality as a medicine man. In fact, only a few of the fresh graduates of formal schools are willing to continue their education in the new field of local Indian medicine. In contrast, many of the people studying medicine in this local United States Indian tribe in Lakotas (Faller 64) have also been introduced of the United States’ white men’s medical school among the Navajo Indians. However, this Navajo idea is not part of the wishes of the Oglala Indians because they do not aim to set up their own medicine schools. Here, the local Indians can sell their medical materials like the medicinal herbs as well as the ceremony programs. Usually, these Indian health programs allow the selling or giving of medicine materials and ceremonial disease -curing processes to be sold or given to another person needing them. The medical training of Indians aspiring to be medical practitioners includes starting out as assistant singer or drummer in a real live medical hearing process for several years. The Indian medical student must blend into the environment with their participation of much needed Sun Dance and other medicine rights so that the medicine trainees so they could increase their powers as well as reputation with their patients handled. For, the medicine men and women believe that they have reached that pinnacle in life where they could qualify as a representative of the spirit world. For the medicine men and women in this tribe normally also use the power of conjuring spirits to help them in their day to day medical practices (Lewis 39). A healing process includes consulting the parents and relatives of the sick patient in order to get a historical background the patient from the patients’ health issues as well as the sickness that the patients parents, grandparents and the like normally have. Also, the medicine men and women ask additional information from their patients’ advisers as well as intermediaries. Also, the Indian healers show the same techniques and processes as they go about curing sick patients with the same illnesses. A formal healing session always starts with the patient visiting the Indian healer several times in a casual way in order to entice the Indian healers to accept this person as a new patient. Accepting this patient is a new contract. The medicine men and women normally command the patients to first fast, to seek visions, to abstain on some things, to pray for divine healing from God, and to prepare food for inns. Accepting the new patient is then followed by the Indian healers’ full concentration of healing powers and time to a full implementation of the proper medical healing procedures to be imposed. In turn, the patient can now sit back, relax and wait for their medicine man or medicine woman to help him or her cure his or her medical condition. The medicine men and women recognize some of the medical practices of white doctors. One such belief shared by both types of doctors is that time is an ally in many medical cases. For, these Indian healers believe that time helps in their patients’ recovery process. Also, time heals some fears or phobias like what the white psychologists and psychiatrists adhere to. Naturally, the arrival of the medicine man or woman ushers in the patient a sign of relief because finally something and something will step into the painful world to extricate them from their miseries (Lewis 40). Normally, the Indian medicine man or woman’s healing repertoire includes a drama –like presentation. Meaning, the curing process includes a stage, actors as well as music. For, the patient is now transported into a world where the patient is not placed in darkness, immobility and a world of healing songs which sometimes includes dances. Consequently, the patient is healed because of the trance they enter into where the medical songs bring healing into their afflicted body part or parts (Lewis 42). This picturesque orchestra –like description of the medicine man’s or medicine woman’s work shows that he or she plays a pivotal part in the Oglala Nebraska, USA Indian community. On the other side of the United States, the Navajo Indians also use their kind of traditional healing. The medicine men here use the medical technique of gazing. The medicine men just gazes in their patients to feel the aura of the patient. For, the Navajo Indian medicine men will feel the vibrations that tell him what caused the patient to fall victim to a virus, bacteria, to succumb to high blood, diabetes, cancer, epilepsy and the like. The Navajo Indian doctor then moves some of the patients’ parts like the hands and feet to confirm his first impression of what the patients’ ailment is (Davies 83). The medicine doctors of Oglala Sioux Indians of Nebraska, USA’s main role is to maintain the health of their small Indian community. The medicine men use primitive ways of curing the sick. One such way is to use the Sun Dance. The Sun dance brings health to the community because this festive dance is believed to absorb the vital elements of the environment and funnel it to the people in the community. Also, the medicine man uses the communication process as part of his healing procedures. Here, he gathers much needed information from the patient, his family and his relatives in order to come up with the cause or causes of his unhealthiness.