Transcript: Michael W. Painter, M.D.

Native beliefs about illness and the role of traditional healers in restoring balance

[Lindberg:]: Is illness ever interpreted as a punishment for bad behavior?
[Painter:]: I think that—the short answer is, yeah—I think there are some people who would assume that I got sick because something happened in my life. I mean that’s part of connecting with your traditional healer, to help them sort of tease that out a little bit, and that part of what the traditional healer would be doing is sort of correcting some balances of good and bad, misdeed or whatever, while you’re also working on the sort of Western sort of front. But, yeah, sometimes people think that way.