Religious Beliefs And Practices Of The Tlingit And Navajo People

The religious beliefs and practices of the Tlingit and Navajo people were similar in that their religions wasn’t like western religion, such as the organization, expansion, high priests or leaders. Both people groups’ beliefs were centered around spirituality, maintaining balance, and respecting all spirits, which is in all living things. They also had similar responses to witchcraft that was suspected within their communities. When people became ill, it was believed to be the result of witchcraft. The Tlingit would have a shaman cure the illness if possible. The most common people to be accused of witchcraft in the Tlingit communities were women, children, and slaves, they were then tortured for confession or killed. However in the Navajo

They thought everything under the dome had a spirit. Outside of the dome they thought there were spirits lived on the sun and moon and that the stars where houses. Rainbow was the path path that the dead took the path to go from the earth to the upperworld. The northern lights were thought to be human spirits playing. Whereas the Navajo belief centered around hozho, which is the concepts of beauty, harmony, goodness, normality and success. The Holy People is the major focus of the traditional narratives and belief system of among the Navajo. The Holy People were believed to be powerful supernatural beings who had the ability to restore balance in the human life. By doing ritual obligations, the Holy People would give harmony in return. It’s believed that the natural and the supernatural blend into each other, where breaking the balance would result in illness and other human

The singer would focus on a particular person who could gain benefit for themselves as well as their family, local group, or the Navajo as a whole. A tyro was a novice singer who was in the process of learning hundreds of chants precisely, long and involved prayers, the uses of plant medicines, preparation of drypaintings or sand paintings, and other ritual processes. The practitioners within the Tlingit was Shamans, who controlled the spirits represented in their masks and the spirits specific to their clan, but some spirits could be controlled by any shaman, which could be from people who died alone in the forest or lost at sea. Shamans neither cut nor combed their hair, wore a bone necklace that would be used to scratch their head. Spirit helpers included sun, sea, and the crest animals of the clan. To help the sick the shaman would summon a spirit helpers, and blew, sucked or passed objects over the locus of the disease. When the shaman was to die, it was believed that the spirit of the shaman would enter the body of an upstanding youth in the clan. Nephews who wanted the position of shaman would go into trances around the dead shamans body, whoever was in trance that longest would likely be named the successor. After this they would go into the forest to look for signs that they had obtained the shaman's power, the most common sign being