Yee naaldlooshii (Diné tradition)
In Navajo (Diné) belief, the yee naaldlooshii ('by means of it, it goes on all fours') is a kind of witch who uses evil ritual to take animal form, the opposite of a healer.
1944 CE · 35.67, -109.06 · status: legend
The account
It is one of several kinds of witch in Diné tradition, seen as a corruption of the good work of medicine people. The subject is part of a living belief system tied to ceremony and ways of life, and many Diné prefer not to discuss it with outsiders, or at all; speaking of it lightly can be seen as harmful. The name 'Skinwalker Ranch' borrows the word, though the ranch is on the edge of the Ute reservation, not Navajo land.
The sceptical view
This is a cultural and ethical subject more than a scientific one. Diné and other Native scholars ask outsiders not to treat it as a horror story or a TV brand, and to accept that some knowledge is not theirs to have.
Connections in the atlas
- 'Some Kind of Power' (Brady, 1984)
- Adrienne Keene's 'ethnographic refusal' (2016)
- Navaho Witchcraft (Kluckhohn, 1944)
- Wendigo
- The Navajo witch purge of 1878
- Taniwha
- Skinwalker Ranch