Native_Americans_Reach_Womanhood

Native Americans Reach Womanhood UNITED STATES Among the Navajo of the Southwestern U.S., girls are ushered into women hood during their first and second menstruations through a ceremony called the Kinaalda, which tests their physical, moral, and intellectual strength. Oral history indicates that the Kinaalda recreates an ancient ceremony that was once performed on the Navajo’s most honored deity, Changing Woman, during which she was blessed with the ability to bear healthy children. On the morning of the rituals first day, the girl kneels on the floor of her grandmother’s hooghan, an eight-sided ceremonial lodge. Beside her is her spiritual leader, the Ideal Woman, who washes and combs the girl’s long hair and ties it loosely with a buckskin strap. With this act, she binds together thought, life, and good values. Then, the girl stretches facedown on blankets and the Ideal Woman massages her shoulders and lowers back, thus woman, girl, through, hooghan, women, once, night, long, life, kinaalda, ideal, first, during, day, dawn, corn, ceremony, cake, back, on, world, way, washes, values, ushered, together, ties, thus, thought, tests, tasks, task, sun, strong, stretches, strength