Exactly. Since their habits are relatively secret, it is very hard to establish anything as absolute truth in regards to their ways. If one were to believe every single statement in regards to them, you'd end up with a very contradictory picture. For instance, they are also accused of necrophilia and grave robbing. However, my husband cannot pinpoint any one actual report of this having happened. It doesn't make it so that the accusation is untrue but if this was a common practice, one would certainly be hearing about graves being desecrated especially since death is such a touchy subject with the navajo. My husband and I feel that this is the power and way of the discussion taboo. Instead of having people openly discuss them, comparing factors and perhaps pinpointing what or who they could be--it's left entirely to gossip, which can be utterly distorted rather like playing a telephone game. The end result is that the skinwalkers are wearing a mask that is built by the discussion taboo and doesn't easily permit open viewing of facts in regards to them.

It could be an initiation thing. However, if they were part of the tribe once itself as one of the old stories states, it would be impossible for them to have been part of the tribe with murder being part of their initiation. They would've been excommunicated from the start and it doesn't seem like their excommunication was all too long ago. Perhaps in the last hundred or so years.

Stephanie

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.--Ralph Waldo Emerson