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Essay on Kinaalda Ritual Does Not Have Lasting Impact on Person's Identity
Among the Navajo Indians, for girls, a puberty ceremony still common today— kinaaldá —acknowledges and celebrates this time of life. “As a young girl,” Dorothy Secody remembers, “my mother told me, when I get my puberty (first menses), please do not hide it, because that is very sacred.” (Begay, Clinton-Tullie & Yellowhair, 1983) The 4-day kinaaldá focuses on the girl's physical and mental endurance. She runs in the morning and noon on all but the fourth day, when she runs only in the morning, each time increasing the length of her course. Throughout the ceremony she grinds corn, prepares food, and serves guests.
These “will be her tasks as a woman and mother, ” Shirley Begay et al. (1983) observe; “undertaking them during the four days of her puberty ceremony will prepare her to be helpful and dependable”.Almost all Navajo ceremonials are motivated by a certain need, most commonly that felt by a single individual. The need may arise out of the accession to a particular stage in the life cycle or out of the events peculiar to an individual's life. For example, when a girl experiences her first menses, it is time for her first kinaaldá ceremony, which is a puberty rite. In it she is made into a woman and her preparation for marriage is initiated. On this occasion, the person and her family begin to review the past in an attempt to discover some transgression or error of the sufferer that might have given rise to ill health.
The etiology of the disease is the focus in this effort, rather than the symptoms as such. If this is unsuccessful they procure the assistance of a "seer" who, through methods of divination, "sees" the causal factor and recommends the ceremonial which will most appropriately rectify the situation......
