Cry of the eagle: Encounters with a Cree healer

After a vision in which he beheld himself as a leader in the revitalization of native medicine and culture, medicine man Russell WIllier began to share his healing practices and world view with three anthropologists. In this volume they describe how WIllier treats chronic, stress-related condition and physiological dysfunctions with herbal remedies, sweat-lodge therapy, religious ceremony, and other techniques.

Cry of the Eagle also discusses the process by which the anthropologists experienced the medicine man's work. That process required change in both Willier and his observers. One of the most powerful events in their three-year association occurred when David Young's wife suddenly became critically ill. In the hospital her condition quickly worsened, and doctors were unable to diagnose the problem. Young surreptitiously brought the medicine man to the hospital, where a combination of native remedies and Western medical techniques worked together to restore her health.

Young, Ingram, and Swartz describe a process of shared vision and mutual change. They provide a rare insight into an aspect of native culture little known to the outside world.

David E. Young is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. He is the author of Cry of the Eagle: Encounters with a Cree Healer (University of Toronto Press, 1990).

Grant Ingram was a graduate student in anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Lisa Swartz has taught in the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta.