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"Medicine man" is an English term used to describe Native American religious figures; such individuals are analogous to shamans. The term "medicine man" has been criticized by Native Americans, and various scholars.
The primary function of these "medicine men" (who are not always male) is to secure the help of the spirit world, including the Great Spirit (Wakan Tanka in the language of the Lakota Sioux), for the benefit of the community.
Sometimes the help sought can be for the sake of healing disease, sometimes it can be for the sake of healing the psyche, sometimes the goal is to promote harmony between human groups or between humans and nature. So the term "medicine man" is not entirely inappropriate, but it greatly oversimplifies and also skews the depiction of the people whose role in society complements that of the chief. These people are not the Native American equivalent of the Chinese "barefoot doctors", herbalists, or of the emergency medical technicians who ride our rescue vehicles.
To be recognized as the one who performs this function of bridging between the natural world and the spiritual world for the benefit of the community, an individual must be validated in his role by that community.
The medicine man was a very important figure in Native American society. When European missionaries came over to try to convert the Natives into Christianity, the medicine man stood as a major obstacle to the missionaries in trying to convert them.
One of the best sources of information on this subject is the story of a Lakota (Sioux) wicasa wakan ("medicine man") recorded in a book produced with his cooperation called Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions, by John Fire Lame Deer. On a broader scale, Mircea Eliade's Shamanism puts the whole area of religious experience and practice into a broad historical and ethnographic context.
Note: The term wicasa wakan is pronounced, approximately, as "wih-chah-shah wah-kahn". Sometimes "wicasa" is written "wic'as'a" to indicate that the letters "c" and "s" should both receive haceks, as "wichasha" to indicate aspiration, or as "wic^has^ha" to indicate both. "Wakan" is sometimes written "wakaN" or "waka~" to indicate the second A sound should be nasalized.
The term medicine man was also frequently used by Europeans to refer to African shamans, also known as "witch doctors" or "fetish men".
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