Rational
Although students in my classroom have varied beliefs, I want them to know that they are able to use both worlds of medicines. Students will use my experience and other scholars who have continued their education in Western medicine and have become doctors in medicine who made a difference in accepting traditional healing. Navajo doctors, like Dr. Joachin Chino, who is Navajo-Acoma and is chief of surgery at the Tuba City Regional Health Care Corp., Dr. Michael Tutt, in the medical field in rheumatology and internal medicine at Fort Defiance, Dr. Patricia Nez Henderson, the first American Indian woman to graduate from Yale University School of Medicine, and Dr. Mary Roessel, a psychiatrist in Santa Fe, are a few examples of many Diné doctors. I want my students to share their learning from the classroom with relatives at home about the changes that are happening within the medical field of modern and traditional medicines. I want them to understand that treatment of the whole body, and not just part of it, is more beneficial. Students can accept and use the modern changes and still use traditional healing. Learning is holistic: it is around, above, below, behind, in front and inside of each student who wants to learn and help their people. Students need to know modern medicine and traditional medicine have various degrees of sacredness. Protecting and respecting the sacredness will give the medicine value and belief of healing for the whole person (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual) and not just parts of the body.
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