Leon Yost

The Art of Healing, a Dine Medicineway Leon Yost

This booklet documents the Navajo "Red Ant Medicineway," a two-day healing ceremony. Navajo healing ceremonies are sacred and rarely photographed. Each day the medicine man makes a sand painting of holy people on the hogan floor. He calls them with cornmeal, pollen and song and the patient sits in the center to effect the healing. After about two hours he sweeps up the paintings and scatters the sand outside. Leon Yost is a documentary photographer who has worked in the American Southwest since the 1970s. His prior books include, "Riddles on the Rocks, a Tour of Selected North American Rock Art Sites," 2014 and "A Tour of Australian Rock Art," 2017. 31 pages, 35 color photographs