Native american Medicine People Power

Source:

Liptak, Karen. North American Indian Medicine People . Watts.

Pages:

12 and 10

Quote:

‘Medicine people are often respected and even feared by their members. They are respected because they assist the ill to become well with their “good medicine.”  They are feared because they can also use their power to cause illness. This is called “bad medicine.”

Medicine people aren’t limited to healing sick and injured people. In most tribes, they are also called upon to predict the future and to help tribal members have good luck in hunting and planting. Medicine people are also asked to influence the weather. 

Paraphrase:

The Natives called their doctors or apothecarists “Medicine people”.

The Natives thought that the “Medicine people” had some sort of magical powers that was called “good medicine”.

The Natives thought that even though they had the power to do good, they also had the power to do bad. This was called “bad medicine”.

The Natives respected the “Medicine people” but also feared them. They had to be they nice and kind to them.

Medicine people heal and help the people in need medically, but they do more than that.

They are also looked to for advice to predict the future and help the tribe members with gathering food and hunting down animals. 

The medicine people are called upon to change the weather too. ]

The medicine people are very important to every tribe because they have a lot of wisdom.

My Ideas:

This connects to the Giver because the receiver and giver contain all the wisdom and are seen with great power. The medicine people in the Native tribes are seen as wizard-y magical beings. I wonder if the medicine people are elected the same way as Jonas in the Giver too. I wonder if it is like an apprenticeship and you have to learn the skills of the medicine people and live up to the job. We know that a single human cannot change the weather or predict the future, but to the Natives they believed that the medicine people could. I wonder if my prediction in an early notecard is correct. The notecard said that the natives would have a closer idea to the truth of the human body, but it would be more spiritual. So far my prediction about Natives being more spiritual is correct, but I have to find out about their medical ideas. I wonder how this theory started about the medicine people having these powers. Did something happen where the weather changed after the apothecarist had a argument, so the tribe saw it as the fury of the bad medicine. Back then in the colonial times, they had no science to prove otherwise. If a storm came after a fight, to them, that meant one of them upset the spirits or was a spirit him/herself. There is nothing else like this in any other culture. The English had nothing like this and neither did the africans. I wonder if the spiritual side of things made the Natives stronger or weaker during fights because they might have felt like the spirits their on their side or that the English also had evil spirits.  

History:

Created: 10/14/2016 11:00 AM