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Hogans in Hospitals: Navajo Patients Want the Best of Both Worlds
When Kentucky native Connie Taylor first arrived for work at the Chinle Indian Health Service Hospital in the center of the Navajo Nation, she thought the place was on fire.
"I just sort of walked in there and smelled something smoking," the nursing director says.
Her first impulse at the odor of scorched wood in the maternity ward was to grab a fire extinguisher and shoot.
Now, two-and-a-half years later, Taylor's alarm at the smell of smoke in the hospital is long since gone. But the sweet scent of burning cedar is still there in the ward whenever Navajo women are preparing to have their babies.
Smudging with the smoke of sacred cedar to induce good thoughts and serenity is just one of numerous traditional Navajo healing methods used here and at the other four IHS hospitals across the huge southwestern reservation.
In the birthing rooms, red and white woven sash belts, usually worn with traditional dress, hang from the ceilings. Mothers-to-be hold onto them during labor, pulling to help push their babies into the world, and allowing good thoughts to flow from the sash into them to ease the delivery.
Once a baby is born, Navajo mothers often ask for the meconium -- the infant's first stool right after birth -- which they spread on their own faces to help remove what they call the birth mask.
The placenta and umbilical cord are commonly requested by the mother or grandmother, and so are saved as standard procedure by the staff.
"That's taken home and given back to Mother Earth," says obstetrics head nurse Linda K. Begaye. "It's taught we come from Mother Earth and we give back to Mother Earth."
If the baby's a girl, she says, these often are buried by the south side of the hogan where the weaving loom is set up. In this way, she will grow up with the skills of a weaver and always have a home. If it's a boy, they'll be placed in the corral or cornfield so he grows up close to the livestock or appreciative of growing things.
Here, where the native culture is still strong and the Navajo language is spoken everywhere,...