Transcript: Ted Mala, M.D., M.P.H.
The Gourd dance from Oklahoma includes physicians because they are considered modern-day warriors
- [Mala:]
- And the ancestors of the Navajo are the Alaska native Athabascan Indians, same language, culture, everything.
- [Lindberg:]
- Yeah, so it turns out that there were Navajo cleansing ceremonies, so to speak, that were—
- [Mala:]
- And we still do that.
- [Lindberg:]
- —typically done after combat or after war and so on. Some got to do it, and most didn’t.
- [Mala:]
- There’s an interesting dance that we do at the Association of American Indian Physicians called the gourd dance, and for many years it was just veterans, and in the last decade they opened it to warriors, because in—
- [Lindberg:]
- Gourd?
- [Mala:]
- The gourd dance—g-o-u-r-d—from Oklahoma, and we’re initiated into this dance, and Native physicians were included in with the veterans and others because we’re considered modern day warriors. Now they’re admitting some teachers and some lawyers and so on.