108 NATURE-BASED EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY
5. Ritual and ceremony
Ceremony is an integral part of daily and yearly life in the indigenous
cultures we encountered. It is a means of keeping the society whole
and a means to celebrate peoples’ relationships with the spirits and
energies of the landscape. Ceremony connects the mundane to the
sacred (Kimmerer 2013). Here we share three specific experiences
with ceremonial practices: the first in Cochabamba, Bolivia;
the second in the Zuni pueblo in New Mexico; and the third in the
teaching of daily practice from a Cherokee wisdom keeper.CEREMONY IN COCHABAMBA
In Cochabamba, Bolivia, for many years we were invited to take
part in the c’oa, a Quechua ceremony. Here the Quechua shaman
conducted his ceremonies in the surprising venue of a local nightspot.
Late at night, after the other customers had left the bar, we were
invited to participate in this regular ritual for healing and balance
in life. There were many prayers, words spoken in the Quechua
language. We did not understand the language, but we understood
the sincerity and sacred intention of the words and actions. We all
smoked cigarettes, sending our prayers skyward with the smoke.
Then the shaman carefully laid out his materials, folding small papers
and filling them with various herbs. He invited each of us to take a
small rectangle made of sugar, each inscribed with a symbol. Mine
(Sally) this time was the figure of Santiago with his staff drawn,
riding a horse. I was struck by the image as a symbol of Spanish
Catholicism and remembered how much of Bolivian culture is a mix
of indigenous practices and the beliefs and practices that are the
inheritance of Spanish colonialism. I was told later that Santiago is a
symbol of lightning, the connection between heaven and earth. At the
appropriate time, we were invited, one at a time, to add our symbols
to one of the papers. The shaman poured alcohol on each paper, and
all of them were added to a fire burning in the courtyard. This was
nothing like we imagined a shaman’s ceremony to be. Nonetheless,
somehow each of us was touched by the sincerity, simplicity and
reverence of this ritual.