Pomo – An indigenous people of California. Greg Sarris has written both biographical and fictionalized accounts of the life and work of traditional doctors such as Mabel McKay. He describes their healing practices (e.g., sucking), reliance on dreams and otherworld helpers, combat with “poisoners” or sorcerers, initiatory illnesses, visions, and use of songs and other music. As elsewhere, it is clear that doctors and sorcerers use similar methods but seek different ends. Sarris also discusses the importance of basket weaving and usage in Pomo and neighboring Native American peoples’ cosmologies and shamanic practices. McKay treated her baskets, including those displayed in museums, as other-than-human persons or object-persons in their own right.
SOURCE:
Historical Dictionary of Shamanism by Graham Harvey and Robert J. Wallis 2007
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