Dine – Feminism and Religion

All Navajo ceremonial practices emphasize healing human illness, emotional, mental, and physical, while restoring balance and harmony between humans and the rest of Nature. The most sacred of these ceremonies occur during the winter months. All the winter ceremonies have at their center the healing power of animals. The best known of these is probably the Night Chant that lasts nine days and nine nights and is held sometime around the winter solstice – the timing of these ceremonies is fluid. Like the Night Chant, the Mountain Way Chant probably stretches back into prehistoric times from 60,000 – 4000 B.C.E.

The Mountain Way Chant, the second and equally sacred although less well-known ceremony is also a nine-day night chant that marks a transition between the seasons of winter and spring. The Mountain Way Chant takes place in late winter before thunderstorms strike and the spring winds arrive ( any time after First Light which occurs in the beginning of February until the Spring Equinox). It’s important to know that these ceremonies are not only fluid but can occur as many times as are needed. One purpose is to call up the rains. The ceremony is led by a medicine man that addresses, in particular, the mental uneasiness and nervousness associated with transitions, helping to bring individuals and their extended families back into balance and harmony with the rest of nature (my italics).