Kinaalda: The Navajo Puberty Ritual (Video)

To cook the large corn cake, the girl will have to dig a hole in the earth about four feet wide and one foot deep. The men of the tribe will start a fire in the hole, once it’s dug, and keep the fire going while the girl participates in other parts of her ceremony.

When the batter is ready, the girl will line the heated hole with corn husks that will prevent the cake from getting dirt and ash in it. Then she’ll pour the batter into the whole and cover it with more corn husks. The cake will then be cooked in the hole over night during the festivities.

When the cake is ready, it will be cut in a circular fashion, starting on the eastern side, and then be offered to everyone in the tribe. The center pieces of the cake are offered to the more prestigious members of the tribe like the girl’s grandmother and the medicine man who presided over the ceremony. 

Throughout the course of the ceremony, the girl will be ‘molded’ several times. This is a symbolic process by which the girl’s mother will have the girl stand upright before her or lay her straight on the ground and pass her hands over the girl in a motion that is similar to that of molding clay.

The mother doesn’t actually touch the girl, her hands hover slightly above the girl’s body. The girl’s hair is taken down during this time and pulled out straight. The Navajo mothers do this so that their daughters will grow strong and tall. They ‘mold’ the girls hoping they will grow up attractive, and thin and the girls’ hair is left down and, sometimes, pulled gently so that it will grow out long and straight. 

After the girl is molded, she often goes out into the tribe to mold others who wish it. She will lift up smaller children in hopes that she will help them to grow tall and strong. She will also lay hands on the elderly and the sick in hopes of helping or healing them because it is believed that, during this time, she is a magical being and has the power to heal. 

The ceremony ends on the last day with a final run, a final molding, and the distribution of the alkaan. 

And, though the Navajo have an incredibly detailed ceremony to signify a girl’s passage into adulthood, there is no such ceremony for boys. If anything, Navajo boys enter manhood by means of a four day solitary survival trip, though I have not been able to verify that this is something the Navajo have ever actually done.
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