Time to reflect

World over, rituals celebrate those who have passed

LAST MONTH, A NAVAJO MEDICINE MAN performed a private cleansing ceremony at the Tucson residence hall where a University of Arizona Navajo freshman was stabbed to death.

The ceremony was conducted by Thomas Yazzie, a traditional medicine man who has a son attending UA. It started at sunset and lasted four hours.
For the Navajo Nation, cultural beliefs hold that the building where this tragedy occurred must be cleansed if Navajo students were ever to reside there again. One Navajo student had requested a residence transfer, which was granted.

The Navajo death ceremony on the modern UA campus is a reminder of the power that ancient death rituals hold in the United States.
For many cultures, the death of a loved one offers contemplation of death and rebirth.

The Aztecs’ ceremonies of death and rebirth at the end of summer in August has been transmuted by the Catholic faith into the Day of the Dead festivals observed Nov. 1 and 2 in Mexico, some Latino American countries and in the U.S. Southwest.

Dia de Los Muertos is a time when Latino families honor their dead, and celebrate the continuity of life. For Latinos, remembering deceased loved ones is a festive, not a sad, occasion.

All cultures have developed ceremonies to cope with death.

Navajos aren’t so much afraid of death itself as they are of the dead. According to their traditions, when a person dies, he or she goes down into the underworld, a place where the dead reside. And if proper precautions aren’t taken by the living, the dead can come back from that underworld and do evil upon the living.

Navajo traditional funeral customs reflect their fears:

• If the person dies in his or her home, the home must be destroyed.

• When a person dies, the body is buried as soon as possible.

• A lot of care is put into burial, because the Navajo believe that if a body is buried improperly, the deceased can come back to the former dwelling in a spirit form.

• Two Navajo men are required to handle the body, washing and dressing it. The two men wear only moccasins, and their bodies are covered with ashes to ward off evil spirits. If possible, Navajos enlist an outsider orAnglo to handle the burial.

In Japan it is believed the spirits of one’s ancestors return every August to visit their living relatives. During this annual Buddhist event, called Obon, lanterns are hung to guide the spirits, graves are visited and cleaned, home altars feature food offerings and special dances are held. At the end of Obon, lanterns float on rivers, lakes and seas to guide the spirits back to their world.

The funeral processions in New Orleans are another example of how survivors celebrate the life of the deceased, instead of dwelling on the sorrow. It is a time to rejoice to energetic jazz music that commands the hands of mourners to clap and feet to dance. A funeral in New Orleans also is called the “final party.” Along the route bands play and people dance in the streets, a tradition which is called “second line.”

Inevitably, death is a passage we all will experience. It is up to us to think ahead to prepare and to the living to decide how they will say goodbye.

As the great Shawnee Nation Chief Tecumseh once counseled members of his tribe, “When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more timie to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”