Transcript: Jeffrey Henderson, M.D.
The Lakota Lawompee ceremony, performed about a year after a healing has taken place, offers thanks to the healer
- [Henderson:]
- And that’s very characteristic of traditional healing practices. There’s almost always a follow-up, and that follow-up can be the next time you see somebody at the community gathering next week. It could be a follow-up a month later, six months later, a year later. In many cases, the person who was healed is instructed to support and carry out a lawampi ceremony. “Lawampi” is a Lakota name for a thanksgiving ceremony, and so generally a year later, you’d come back and you would throw a ceremony of thanksgiving for what that traditional healer did, so at a minimum you’d be brought together again with that person, but you generally would have seen the healer repeatedly between then.