In this News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, as we ready for our Saturday, January 30, 2021, event, we explore some roles of Native American women over countless generations. We start with a fireside chat with Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center.
Nursing Traditions, Indigenous Nursing, Part 1
Editor’s Note: Clifford E. Trafzer, distinguished professor of history, Rupert Costo chair in American Indian Affairs, and director of American Indian Studies, the California Center for Native Nations, and the Native American Education Program at UC Riverside, shares a chapter about Native American nurses from his upcoming book, Strong Hearts & Healing Hands: Southern California Indians and Field Nurses, 1920-1950, which is scheduled to be published in March 2021. This is Part 1 of that chapter; we will share more in our next News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center (February 3, 2021). To explore more about this work and order this book on fighting infectious diseases in the early twentieth century, please visit University of Arizona Press.
Nursing Traditions, Indigenous Nursing
By Clifford E. Trafzer
Since the time of Native American creations, selected indigenous women served as nurses. They cared for families, villagers, and tribal members. Most grandmothers, mothers, aunties, and daughters had general knowledge of disease and healing. Still, not every woman qualified as a Native nurse. Only those women with a special calling to treat the sick with herbal and spiritual healing became nurses. They often found their way to nursing through dreams, visions, and ceremonies. Some received the power to heal others while spending time alone, away from others. Indigenous nurses had larger roles within villages and shared a commitment to heal the sick, help pregnant women with prenatal and postnatal care as well as mentor young women in the art of nursing. Many were midwives with knowledge of birthing and community health. In order to become an indigenous nurse, spiritual forces had made these women special through the gift of healing. They lived to serve others, heal the infirmed, and dedicate themselves to improve the well-being and health of others. (1)
Most Native nurses served their communities in the home, but they also nursed people in sacred places where women prayed to bring healing power of plants to heal people and spiritual power into patients. (2) They also called on spiritual power to surround patients and infuse their bodies with the healing spirit. Nurses connected the spiritual power of healing through ritual and prayer. The use of both was not unique among Native American nurses. Since ancient times healers around the world had called on spiritual forces to heal people. Although the arrival of settlers from Spain, Mexico, Asia, and the United States changed many aspects of indigenous culture in Southern California, American Indian women of the region continued to nurse their people long into the twentieth century with the common goal of individual and community wellness. They still do today. (3) Non-Native nurses attended schools of nursing. They learned the methodologies of Western medicine. Native American women learned nursing from tribal elders, practical experience, and spiritual guidance. Both non-Native and indigenous nurses received a calling to follow the nursing path as healers, teachers, and care provider. They attend the sick, offered diagnoses, provided treatments, recommended nutritious foods, prepared pharmaceuticals, cared for infants, and provided prenatal, birthing, and postnatal care. (4)
The art of nursing within tribal communities included the care of family members and community people to promote health and wellness. Indigenous nursing in Southern California emphasized primary care and the prevention of illnesses originating from cultural causations. To prevent illnesses, indigenous nurses taught children, adults, and elder to follow tribal codes of conduct, norms, and laws. (5) Native nurses often taught children appropriate behavior to prevent illness and death. (6) American Indian nurses cared for the ill, helped the disabled, and comforted the dying. They taught their people to promote safety within and outside communities.
Palms and year-round water, an important place in Cahuilla desert homelands (Pat Murkland Photo).
Native nurses promoted safety when groups traveled through the mountains, deserts, and valleys of Southern California. Nurses usually traveled with Native groups, moving from their villages to hunt, gather, or trade. (7) Indigenous nurses cared for the basic needs of sojourners. They traveled along the foot trails, horse trails, and trade routes with other villagers, caring for the people. They taught travelers protective songs and prayers and how to make offerings at shrines and rock cairns along the way. (8) The people believed that songs, prayers, and offerings were preventive medicine that protected people along the trails from storms, attacks, famine, and drought. Native nurses kept and executed knowledge of caretaking, curing, health, and safety. (9)
Native nursing is one cultural element found within traditional American Indian communities of Southern California. Indigenous nurses not only cared for individuals but they taught young Native women the art of nursing. They continued to serve their communities even after the arrival of newcomers from Spain, Mexico, and the United States. Indigenous nurses sometimes worked with a team of indigenous healers, including Indian specialists who cured wounds, broken bones, and practiced dentistry. When nurses found patients suffering from spirit sickness resulting from cultural violations, indigenous nurses referred patients to a shaman who harnessed positive energy to heal through spiritual means. When patients needed the expertise of medicine men, nurses guided patients to a specific shaman with expertise in certain forms of healing. When patients needed herbal medicines, nurses gathered the necessary plants, enjoined the spirit world for help and administered medicine to the infirmed. (10)
Medicine plant yerba santa (tanwivel in Cahuilla) (Pat Murkland Photo)
Indigenous nurses within every community served the health needs of their people. These nurses lived in an expansive geography of Southern California, a landscape composed of diverse areas, from the Pacific coast to the inland valleys, mountains, foothills, and deserts. Indigenous Southern California was far more than the coastal regions so well-known through modern media. (11) The Pacific coast was once the home of thousands of Native Americans, including many Native nurses. However, settlers pushed the first people into the interior and marginalized coastal Indians. With time, Native people lost their villages located on or near the Pacific coast. Settlers forced Indians into the interior and refused to establish reservations on or near the coast of Southern California. Thus, the Kumeyaay, Luiseño, Cupeño, Chumash, Tongva, and Acjachamen lost their villages in the western part of Southern California. As anthropologist Florence Shipek stated, settlers pushed Indians into the rocks. (12)
Creation narratives and origin songs of all Indian people of Southern California included female creators that taught tribal caretaking, provided indigenous diets, offered preventive medicine, and cured sicknesses. In a very real sense, the women depicted in creation songs and stories served their people as the first indigenous nurses. One creation account originated among Nuwuvi or Southern Paiute people of eastern California, the Great Basin, and American Southwest. According to Southern Paiute people, Ocean Woman fell from the sky and began acts of creation, including the formation of solid land, bodies of water, animation of animals, and the emergence of mankind. Ocean Woman was the first nurse among Nuwuvi people. She created and nurtured plants and animals so they would benefit Southern Paiute people. Ocean woman was the first creator of Southern Paiute people, and her work mirrored influence the future work of Native nurses. They learned from Ocean Woman to teach new nurses and cure the infirmed. (13)
According to Southern Paiute people, at the time Ocean Woman fell to earth from the upper world, she brought unseen power that enveloped the earth in networks and spirals. (14) Many tribes believed invisible power surrounded the entire earth but concentrated in specific places within the larger aboriginal territory. Chemehuevi called his power puha; Cahuilla called it ivax. Power concentrated on mountaintops, rocks inscribed with petroglyphs and pictographs, and places of water. These places of power also concentrated caves, springs, rivers, unique landforms, and places where tobacco grew wild. Power concentrated in these and other places, and nurses used these sites to obtain healing power. Native nurses knew of these places and used them. They took pilgrimages to these places to receive power they used to heal others. When possible, nurses took patients to these places to ask spiritual power to intervene in a patient’s health. Many past tribal people of Southern California knew of such places of power and once used them to promote health. The people had many names for healing power and places. Everyone, including indigenous nurses, believed in and used spiritual healing power. (15)
[To be continued.]
Notes from C. Trafzer
1. Katherine Saubel and Eric Elliott, ‘Isill Héqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail 1 (Banning, Ca.: Malki Museum Press, 2004), 589.
2. The Complete Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 1956-57.
3. Within the tribes of Southern California, skilled women assist young mothers with prenatal, birthing, and postnatal care, including the Mother Earth Clan that [included] … Lorene Sisquoc, Barbara Drake, and Cindi Alvitre. This clan emphasizes proper nutrition for all Native Americans but especially expecting mothers.
4. The descriptions of nurses derive from explanations of contemporary nursing provided by the International Council of Nurses, 1987, see https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/workforce/what-is-nursing/
5. Saubel and Elliott, ‘Isill Héqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail 2, 793-94. Katherine Saubel presents elements of Cahuilla protection against rattlesnake bites, which her mother and elders taught her. This is a case of preventive medicine practiced among all the tribes of Southern California.
6. Donald M. Bahr, Juan Gregorio, David I. Lopez, and Albert Alvarez, Piman Shamanism and Staying Sickness (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974), 19-48.
7. Donald M. Bahr, “Pima and Papago Medicine and Philosophy,” in Alfonso Ortiz, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, Southwest 10 (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian University Press, 1983), 195-97.
8. Saubel and Elliott, ‘Isill Héqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail 1, 337.
9. Katherine Siva Saubel and Eric Elliott, ‘Isill Héqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail 1 (Banning, Ca.: Malki Museum Press, 2004), 337; International Council of Nurses, 2002, https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/workforce/what-is-nursing/
10. International Council of Nurses, 1987; Baird, “Pima and Papago Medicine and Philosophy,” 195-197. Cahuilla and Serrano believe that plants grew from their creator’s body. See Saubel and Elliott, ‘Isill Héqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail 1, 294.
11. Lowell John Bean and Lisa J. Bourgeault, The Cahuilla (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989), 13-23; Clifford E. Trafzer, The People of San Manuel (Patton, California: San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, 2002), 15-24; Thomas C. Patterson, From Acorns to Warehouses (Walnut Creek, Ca.: Left Coast Press, 215), 15-32.
12. The statement, pushed into the rocks, originated from anthropologist Florence C. Shipek who published a significant book on the Kumeyaay of San Diego County entitled, Pushed into the Rocks (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987).
13. Clifford E. Trafzer, A Chemehuevi Song: Resilience of a Southern Paiute Tribe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 21-25.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.; Clifford E. Trafzer and Matthew Hanks Leivas, Where Puha Sits: Salt Songs, Power, and the Oasis of Mara (Riverside, Ca.: Rupert Costo Endowment, 2018), 1-4; Bean and Bourgeault, The Cahuilla, 18-20, 57, 60. The concept of the Native Universe in reference to the Western Hemisphere stems from Gerald McMaster and Clifford E. Trafzer, eds. Native Universe: Voices of Indian America (Washington, D. C.: National Museum of the American Indian and National Geographic, 2004), 13-17.
Nurturing Cultural Community and Strength in 2021
Mary Ann Andreas, second from right, and James Ramos, now a California Assemblyman, receive Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s Dragonfly Award in 2014 from Center leaders Ernest and June Siva, for soaring achievements in leadership. (Carlos Puma Photo)
Come hear herstory from three area Native American women. Banning Library District, Friends of Banning Library, and Dorothy Ramon Learning Center will co-host a free online one-hour Zoom session at 4 pm Saturday, January 30, 2021, featuring area Native American women leaders and their nurturing of cultural community and strength: Mary Ann Andreas, a longtime Morongo Reservation tribal leader and a Dorothy Ramon Learning Center Dragonfly Award winner for her leadership, and teen leaders, the sisters Sophia and Isabella Madrigal (Cahuilla-Chippewa), tribal members of Cahuilla Reservation near Anza.
To join the conversation, please sign up here to receive your personalized link:
About the Women Leaders:
Mary Ann Andreas has served on the Morongo Reservation Tribal Council for more than 30 years, including three times as chairwoman. She has been a tribal leader during a rapid and dramatic growth of tribal governments and their abilities to serve their communities, both inside and outside the reservation. She also is a respected leader in state and community politics, including her service as chair of the Native American Caucus for the California Democratic Party. And she’s worked to save and share Southern California’s Native American cultures and traditions. She was awarded Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s Dragonfly Award in 2014 for her soaring leadership achievements.
Isabella (left) and Sophia Madrigal performing in the play Menil and her Heart in 2019.
Teen sisters Isabella Madrigal, currently in her first year at Harvard University, and Sophia Madrigal, a junior at Orange County School of the Arts, have partnered together in projects that champion Native storytelling, seeking to reclaim the national narrative surrounding the Indigenous experience, and to empower Native voices telling Native stories. With her play, Menil and her Heart, which premiered in 2019 at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, Isabella spotlighted the crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women, and her ensuing work included winning the National Girl Scout Award, and speaking at United Nations. Isabella and Sophia Madrigal were awarded more than $10,000 in fellowships for their work surrounding the play.
In 2020, Sophia Madrigal formed the Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit, which encourages cultural storytelling for healing. She wrote a play presented online by Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, Wildflower: Indigenous Spirit, and has led online workshops with the Learning Center, focusing on the use of cultural storytelling for healing and hope, especially during the pandemic.
Thank you!
Thanks for your support! We look forward to sharing more from Cliff Trafzer’s upcoming book in the next News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, February 3, 2021. We invite all to contribute and share ideas: EMAIL. Pat Murkland, Editor. January 27, 2021
Dorothy Ramon Learning Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that saves and shares Southern California Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. Join us at dorothyramon.org and Dorothy Ramon Learning Center on Facebook.