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Not medical advice. The Atlas is not a substitute for a clinician who can examine you.

Native American Healing

Indigenous Medicine of Turtle Island

Evidence grade 1 of 5, Untested. Read how the Atlas grades evidence.

The evidence is layered and, importantly, much of it is held as cultural knowledge that has not been, and in many cases should not be, extracted into Western trials. Several plants in Indigenous North American use have real pharmacological support or gave rise to modern medicines (willow/salicylates; others under study), and the holistic, community-centered approach aligns with growing evidence on social and psychological determinants of health, with culturally grounded healing showing benefit for wellbeing and for engagement in care among Native communities. At the same time, specific spiritual and ceremonial practices are not biomedical treatments and are not evaluated as such, and rigorous trial data on whole traditions is limited (and often inappropriate to demand). The honest framing: living traditions with genuinely useful herbal and physical elements, powerful cultural and psychological dimensions, and real value for culturally grounded care, documented with respect for the peoples who hold them and without pretending ceremony is pharmacology.

Reference only. Not medical advice.

What can go wrong

Practiced within their own traditions and communities, these practices are generally safe and deeply meaningful, and most Native communities use traditional and conventional medicine together. The specific cautions are contextual. The sweat lodge involves real heat stress and dehydration and has caused deaths when run improperly or by unqualified outsiders, most notably the 2009 Sedona event where three people died at a commercial ceremony led by a non-Native promoter later convicted of negligent homicide; anyone with heart, blood-pressure, or other medical conditions, and anyone pregnant, should consult a qualified clinician before entering high-heat environments. Some medicinal plants are toxic or interact with medications, so plant preparations should be discussed with a knowledgeable provider or pharmacist. Sacred-plant practices such as peyote carry their own ceremonial and legal frameworks. A separate harm is cultural rather than physical: the appropriation and commercialization of sacred practices by outsiders, which the nations themselves have formally opposed. Traditional healing should complement, not replace, needed care for serious illness or mental-health conditions, which warrant a licensed provider.

Native American healing is not one system but the many living traditions of hundreds of Indigenous nations across North America, from the Lakota and Dakota of the Plains to the Mescalero Apache of the Southwest, the Ojibwe of the Great Lakes, and Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian peoples. Many share a relational view of health as harmony among body, mind, spirit, community, and land, and healers braid together herbal medicine, ceremony and prayer, the sweat lodge, smudging, and song, with sacred plants such as peyote and tobacco reserved for ritual contexts. Several of these plants carry real pharmacology: willow bark holds the salicin that seeded aspirin, cranberry lowers recurrent urinary infections, and echinacea was the Plains nations' most-used medicine, though its cold evidence is weak. The ceremonial and community core is cultural, not biomedical, and is not evaluated as a drug. An honest account names the diversity, credits the genuine plant and relational value, flags specific risks such as improperly run sweat lodges and plant toxicity, and respects the sacred-knowledge and appropriation concerns raised by the nations themselves.

Not one tradition but hundreds of living Indigenous systems across North America, holistic and relational, with real plant medicines and powerful ceremony, documented with respect.

What people take it for

These are the reasons people give for taking it. They are not effects it has been shown to have.

  • Culturally grounded, holistic care within Native communities, often coordinated with conventional medicine
  • Regional herbal medicines with documented pharmacology (willow bark, cranberry) or long ethnobotanical use (echinacea, osha, bitterroot, devil's club)
  • Ceremony, prayer, the sweat lodge, smudging, and song as community and meaning-centered healing
  • Studying living Indigenous knowledge systems with respect for the peoples who hold them

How it is supposed to work

Where Native healing uses plants, the mechanisms are real plant pharmacology, several plants in wide Indigenous use (willow for pain, echinacea, others) have documented activity, and some seeded modern drugs. Its physical practices (sweat lodge, certain manipulations) have their own mechanisms covered elsewhere. The ceremonial, spiritual, and community dimensions engage the meaning response powerfully, and the relational, whole-person framing aligns with what is now recognized about the social and psychological determinants of health. The spiritual frameworks are not biomedical claims.

What people get wrong

  • Often saidNative American healing is a single set of 'shamanic' practices.

    ActuallyIt is hundreds of distinct traditions across hundreds of nations, each with its own plants, ceremonies, and cosmology. The NLM Native Voices exhibition documents this diversity directly, naming regional medicines and specific healers such as Mescalero Apache medicine man Paul Ortega and Alaska Native healer Rita Blumenstein. Flattening them into one 'shamanic' stereotype erases living peoples, and the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota nations explicitly rejected that flattening in their 1993 Declaration Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality.

  • Often saidThese are extinct or purely historical practices.

    ActuallyThey are living traditions. Ceremony was criminalized under the 1883 Code of Indian Offenses and only re-protected across the twentieth century, yet it survived and was revitalized. Many Native health systems now combine traditional healers with conventional care; the NLM Native Voices exhibition points to centers such as the Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center and Southcentral Foundation that offer both.

  • Often saidAnyone can buy a sweat-lodge or ceremony experience.

    ActuallyThe sweat lodge (Lakota inipi, 'to live again') is a sacred rite meant to be led by trained Indigenous elders who know the songs, language, and safety protocols. The 2009 Sedona deaths occurred at a commercial event run by a non-Native self-help promoter, an appropriation and safety failure, not a traditional ceremony. Traditional lodges are led with strict protocols precisely to keep participants safe.

  • Often saidAspirin and echinacea prove the whole tradition is science.

    ActuallySpecific plants carry real pharmacology on their own merits, but that does not validate every practice, and it cuts both ways. Willow's salicin genuinely seeded aspirin and cranberry lowers recurrent UTIs, yet echinacea, the Plains nations' most-used medicine, showed no reliable cold-treatment benefit in the 2014 Cochrane review. Honest crediting means grading each element for what its evidence supports, not borrowing one plant's strength for everything else.

Who profits, and who pushes back

  • Native healers & communities

    championsTradition keepers

    Practice living, diverse healing traditions integrating herbal medicine, ceremony, and community, often alongside conventional care and protected as religious freedom.

  • Ethnobotany & pharmacology

    endorsesOn Indigenous plants

    Document real pharmacological activity in several plants of Indigenous North American use, some of which seeded modern medicines like salicylates from willow.

  • Public-health researchers

    caveatsCulturally grounded care

    Find culturally grounded healing supports wellbeing and engagement in care for Native communities, while noting ceremony is cultural, not a biomedical treatment to be trialed.

  • Communities on appropriation

    cautionsOn outsider misuse

    Warn that commercialization and appropriation of sacred practices by outsiders can be unsafe (e.g., improper sweat lodges) and disrespectful to the traditions.

Where the research comes from

Most of the published research on this comes from one place. 88% of it is from North America (many nations). Findings that no unrelated group has reproduced are weaker than the study count makes them look.

Share of published research by country of origin.
PlaceShare of published research
North America (many nations)88%
Urban & intertribal communities62%
Mesoamerica (related traditions)60%

How we got here

These traditions are ancient, developed and exchanged among hundreds of nations across the continent over millennia. Ethnobotanist Melvin Gilmore documented in 1917 that Upper Missouri peoples, from the Pawnee to the Blackfeet, used purple coneflower for more ailments than any other plant. Colonization brought displacement and deliberate suppression: the 1883 Code of Indian Offenses criminalized the Sun Dance, Ghost Dance, potlatches, and the work of medicine people, letting agents use imprisonment and withheld rations to enforce assimilation, a campaign whose enforcement culminated in the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre of Big Foot's Lakota band. For roughly half a century Indigenous ceremony was effectively illegal. The ban on dances was lifted in 1933, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act followed in 1978, though it lacked enforcement teeth until later action, including the 1994 peyote amendments. The traditions persisted and were revitalized, and today many Native health systems weave them together with conventional care.

  1. MillenniaDiverse healing traditions developed and exchanged across hundreds of North American nations
  2. 1763Edward Stone's willow-bark trial reported to the Royal Society; salicin isolated by Buchner in 1828, aspirin synthesized later
  3. 1883U.S. Code of Indian Offenses bans the Sun Dance, Ghost Dance, and the practices of medicine people
  4. 1890Enforcement of ceremony suppression culminates in the Wounded Knee massacre of Big Foot's Lakota band
  5. 1917Gilmore documents purple coneflower (echinacea) as the Plains nations' most-used medicinal plant
  6. 1978American Indian Religious Freedom Act signed August 11; affirms the right to ceremony, though without strong enforcement
  7. 1990Employment Division v. Smith rules against Native American Church peyote use
  8. 1994Public Law 103-344 amends AIRFA to protect ceremonial peyote use by Native people
  9. 2009Three deaths at a commercial non-Native sweat-lodge event near Sedona; organizer later convicted of negligent homicide
  10. 2023Cochrane review confirms cranberry reduces recurrent UTIs in specific groups

How it is understood

Native American healing is not one system but the many distinct traditions of hundreds of Indigenous nations across North America, each with its own language, cosmology, plants, and practices, a diversity that resists generalization. Still, many traditions share a holistic, relational view: health as harmony among body, mind, spirit, community, and land, and illness as a disruption of that balance. Healing is often led by medicine people or healers and braids together herbal medicine (echinacea, sage, sweetgrass, cedar, willow, and countless region-specific plants), ceremony and prayer, the sweat lodge (inipi) for purification, smudging with sacred plants, storytelling, song, and the support of community. Some traditions use sacred plants (peyote in the Native American Church; tobacco as a sacred medicine) within strict ritual contexts. Crucially, these are living traditions, practiced today, often alongside conventional medicine, and protected as religious practice (notably by the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978), not relics of the past.

At a glance

Scope
Hundreds of distinct nations/traditions
View
Harmony of body, mind, spirit, community, land
Elements
Herbs, ceremony, sweat lodge, smudging, song
Protected by
Amer. Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978)

What this entry does not yet cover

What follows is unfinished work on our side, not a finding about Native American Healing. A short entry is not a safe entry.

  • Cost and market. We have not documented what it sells for or who sells it.
  • Supply chain. We have not mapped where it is made.
  • Who uses it. We have not documented the user groups.
  • What could change. No forward-looking summary yet.
  • How it compares. We have not set it against the alternatives.
  • Children and teenagers. We have not checked what is known about younger people.

Sources