Joseph Boyden's Three-Day Road

The Role of Traditional Medicine in Joseph Boyden’s “Three Day Road”
The roles of medicine, and its effects on the characters in Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road, address the power that both traditional and modern methods had on Native Americans. When we think of medicine and healing, the images that usually come to mind are needles, pills, or doctors. These are recognized as more contemporary forms that we have become accustomed to today. The forms of healing that are not usually associated with medicine today are the traditional ways of the Native Americans. The role of traditional medicine is a reoccurring theme throughout Boyden’s novel, where he addresses its power, effectiveness, and spiritual significance in the healing of his main characters.
During the novel, Niska plays a pivotal role in the traditional methods of healing and even becomes to represent it. One of her methods was the use of a sweat lodge. “The integration of the physical and the spiritual is at the heart of the tradition of sweat lodges, and is believed to be the most widely practiced indigenous healing ritual” (Dunn, Samantha). We are introduced to times in her life where Niska was in need of mental comfort and spiritual guidance. When she is seduced by the French trapper, her dignity, spirit, and heart are broken by the manipulative lust that the Frenchman uses to rid her of her “heathen Indian” ways (174). After this horrifying encounter, Niska was was fearful he had stolen her power, spirit, and strength through fear he had imposed on her. Deeply hurt and troubled by the experience, she flees back into the bush where she seeks help. She constructs a sweat lodge like her father had taught her, and prayed for purification of the mental _______that the Frenchman caused. Spirit animals began to arrive “rallying around [her] hurt,” finding its source, and extinguishing it (176). Through this traditional method of healing, the spiritual and mental comfort it provided made played a significant role in the ______of Niska. The sense peace that she received from the performance of this traditional ceremony made her World a “fresh and clean place again”(175). This encounter made Niska that much more strong in her beliefs and values as an indigenous medicine woman, and her feelings toward the continual threatening ways of the wemistikoshiw people. Through the power of traditional medicine and its effects on the Niska’s identity, Boyden exemplified her traits as being a proud, strong woman that did not give in during a time of cultural