Enemy Way

The Enemy Way or Anaʼí Ndááʼ is one half of the major Navajo song ceremonial complexes, the other half being the Blessing Way. The Enemy Way is a traditional ceremony for countering the harmful effects of alien ghosts or chindi, and has been performed for returning military personnel.^[1]

The Enemy Way ceremony involves the patient identifying (through chant, sandpainting, and dance) with the powerful mythical figure Monster Slayer.^[2] The ceremony lasts three days; on the second morning a mock battle is performed.^[3]

Associated with the Enemy Way is a Girl's Dance (sometimes called "Squaw Dance"), to which young men are invited by marriageable young women.^[4] This derives from an aspect of the Monster Slayer myth, in which two captive girls are liberated.^[3]

The Enemy Way ceremony is described in Tony Hillerman's novel The Blessing Way.

See also

• Jeff King (Navajo)

External links

• Native Words, Native Warriors, from the National Museum of the American Indian
• The Navajo Enemy Way Ceremony
• Twin Rocks Trading Post: The Navajo War Dance

References

1. ^ Robert F. Murphy (ed), American Anthropology, 1946-1970: Papers from the American Anthropologist, University of Nebraska Press, 2002, p. 111, ISBN 080328280X.
2. ^ Vincent Crapanzano, The Fifth World of Forster Bennett: Portrait of a Navajo, University of Nebraska Press, 2003, p. 238, ISBN 0803264313.
3. ^ ^{a b} Reginald Laubin and Gladys Laubin, Indian Dances of North America: Their Importance to Indian Life, University of Oklahoma Press, 1989, p. 423, ISBN 0806121726.
4. ^ Clyde Kluckhohn, Dorothea Cross Leighton, Lucy H. Wales, and Richard Kluckhohn, The Navaho, Harvard University Press, 1974, p. 228, ISBN 0674606035.