Holy visit 1996: Prophecy, revitalization, and resistance in the contemporary Navajo world

Journal/Book: Ethnohistory. 1998; 45: 905 W Main St, Ste 18-B, Durham, NC 27701, USA. Duke Univ Press. 747-793.

Abstract: In the spring of 1996 supernaturals visited the Navajo homeland to deliver a prophetic message of potential import to all Navajo people. In response, thousands of Navajo made pilgrimages to the site, while others had ceremonies conducted in their home communities and ceremonial practitioners made pilgrimages to the Navajo sacred mountains. In national recognition of the event, the Navajo Nation Unity Day of Prayer was established. Details of the Holy Visit of 1996 and activities that have transpired in response to it are contextualized within anthropological analyses of revitalization movements, as well as Navajo oral history, historical accounts of similar events in the Navajo world, and information about various forms of resistance to the incident and events resulting from it. This comparative frame allows evaluation of how this incipient revitalization movement correlates with or diverges from Navajo responses to similar events in the past and such phenomena worldwide.

Note: Article Schwarz MT, Wesleyan Univ, Ctr Amer, Middletown,CT 06459 USA

Keyword(s): GHOST DANCE

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