HI Teacup,

In some ways, there is a parallel with medieval European witchcraft and Church officials. The Church has to do a bit witching in order to do exorcisms. Priests are also sometimes thought to be more attuned to sensing the devil's presence. Ideally, I suppose they should be less corruptible or more "evil-proof".

With Navajo culture, I think you have to remember the overall belief system. How do you explain bad things happening, like illness? You are either out of sync with the world order or you've been witched. Not every bad thing that happens has to be caused by a skin walker, but the possibility is there. Some things, like illnesses, can be cured (or perhaps resolve on their own), and the patient may believe that a skinwalker was the cause and was driven off.

Another important point here is that Western culture tends to scoff at the reality of witchcraft and magic. For people who have experienced it, it is quite real, and it remains unexplained to those who don't fall into the pseudo-skeptic trap of naive scientism.

One of my professors (of anthropology) lived with a tribe in Africa. At one point he was cursed by a witch doctor, and he did become quite ill. He did not "believe" it, when it was happening and continued looking for a rational explanation. He never found one. What cured him was following advice from his friends in the tribe: hire a rival witch doctor to battle his spiritual enemy in a spiritual way. That worked.

He did consider the possibility of something psychosomatic, some kind of "hysteria," but there were as many problems with that as looking for a scientific explanation. In the end, it was what it was. That's why I like the quote I posted above from N. Scott Momaday about things that are opaque.