Ritva Kurittu Wrote:
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> Hi Stephanie,
>
> (I hope this answer was for me, it's pretty hard
> to follow who's answering who...).

Yeah, it is, lol. I don't know how many times I've been tempted to whip out a ruler lol.
>
> Yes, I'm aware of the jewelry being common, I just
> wondered about a skinwalker wearing it. Why I
> noted it to "be expensive" was, because I imagined
> that the skinwalkers didn't have that much of
> posessions (if they live in caves?). Another thing
> is, that wearing tribal jewelry is a cultural
> thing and you wouldn't expect a skinwalker holding
> to traditions. Yet obviously, the one pictured
> did.

Skinwalkers are very traditional. Although they are a perversion of the beauty way and the ways of medicine men, they are also very traditional. Their status as outcast and behavioiurs would put them in a position of very little contact--especially european intrusions. Skinwalkers also use medicine bundles. These are the same as a medicine man's medicine bundle but instead of being stocked for healing, it's for poisoning. There is no doubt in our minds that Lawrence Jacquez has seen skinwalkers but he is also living in a different area of the reservation. What could be the norm for our area (no jewelry) may be different in his area. My explanation as to how common jewelry is amongst the reservation was to explain how it is just seen as being jewelry but as money as well. If skinwalkers can be contacted and their services procured, the prominent forms of payment would be livestock or jewelry. If they had it, they could possibly wear it as a symbol of power and wealth.

> Do other natives have skinwalkers, or is this just
> a Navajo thing?

The Apache have something similiar as well, not a true skinwalker but close. Although the producers of the Missing say that the brujo in the Missing isn't Apache but spoke it, alot of people out here assumed that the character was an Apache sorceror (toned down in the movie, though). Ttbomk, the pueblo tribes out here do not have anything similiar.

Stephanie




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