
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 3, 1993                   TAG: 9306030117
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WINDOW ROCK, ARIZ.                                LENGTH: Short

NAVAJOS TO TRY TRIBAL MAGIC

For weeks, scientists have been analyzing blood and tissue samples and testing bacteria to try to find out what's causing a flu-like illness that has killed 13 people, most with ties to the Navajo Reservation.

Now the tribe will ask its medicine men to try to solve the mystery.

"Western medicine has its limitations," Navajo Nation President Peterson Zah said at a news conference Wednesday.

"We're going to call on some Navajo medicine people to help us analyze the situation and to see if there are other avenues that are available to us as a nation so that we can define what it is that is causing these deaths," Zah said.

The roughly three to four dozen shamans who live on the reservation in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah will get involved this week, Zah said.

He gave no specifics on what they will do; it is taboo in Navajo culture to discuss their work. Traditionally, however, medicine men are tribal elders who perform ceremonies, such as making sand paintings, to cleanse and heal the spirit. Navajos believe that leads to physical recovery.

Zah also said families of Navajo victims will break another taboo - not speaking of the dead - to assist investigators and try to help other residents of the reservation.

Keywords:
FATALITY

by CNB