The Navajo Night Chant is a form of orature that is performed through dances and spiritual healing. Originating amongst the Native Americans, the chant served as a way to harmonize between earth and man while offering healing services. The goal of the Navajo night chant is to establish a connection between earth and man. Through the use of sand paintings and prayer sticks, the Navajo used this as a tangible link to nature that helped treat many illnesses.
This particular form of orature provided a strong link to the Native American community. The power of dance and chant kindled a flame for the culture of the people that was passed down through many families. Since the chant involves many people to be performed, this incorporates all the members of the community involved. Not only does the chant represent a link to man and earth, it also serves as a link between man and man. While the night chant is performed, people are required to come together and pour their emotions into the surroundings around them, providing a closer relationship amongst themselves. To those that encounter this chant, the values of spiritual renewal, socializing, and cultural reaffirmation is offered. Furthermore, since the Navajo use the chant as a form of healing, this brings forth the severe importance of preserving the earth and staying linked to it.
Overall, the night chant elicits a structural order amongst the Navajo people and nature. It demonstrates how man can take natures resources and turn them into a positive healing effect. The Navajo ceremonies emphasize a man’s ability to control their world, while balancing their responsibility to use that control in order to provide balance, respect, and healing. By doing so, the Navajo Night Chant goes beyond conventional healing ceremonies and incorporates art, medicine, religion, and science. The chant accurately represents the culture of the Navajo as it accentuates the central value of beauty. Similar to Romanticism, the chant offers intense emotion as a source of aesthetic experience. Both the Navajo and Romanticism delve into the idea of natural and untamed settings, which are commonly shown through the Navajo chants. Romanticism attempted to evoke imagination, spontaneity and freedom, and this is just what the Navajo chants embodies.
Great post! You highlight the intent toward harmony very nicely, by describing the harmony between man and nature but also between fellow men. You show the importance that this ritual chant has in forming a community. One of the things you didn’t mention (and I assume this is a spatial question — you can’t fit in everything in such a short post) is the importance of impermanence in this ritual. We see this in the sand painting (which you do mention). They are very intent on not allowing this to exist permanently, going so far as to ban any photography of the ritual. Furthermore, the notion of sound, of chanting, of the repetition in the rhythm. Rhythm is something intangible. It comes through in the repetition of sound (in this case). . . and we can think about sound as being that mode of expression that is non-signyfing, impermanent — you cannot arrest sound without killing it, as you only get silence (as opposed to an image, lets say a movie, in which you can freeze it and still observe it). Anyway, I’m riffing now. But very interesting stuff. Good work! 5/5