duajida

The duajida is a nighttime divination ceremony that Fat Crack Ortiz performs for Lani Walker, seeking spiritual guidance about her future. In the novel, its repeated prediction that Lani will become both a medicine woman and a doctor gives the ceremony a specific role: it joins traditional healing with hospital medicine and offers Lani a means of seeking knowledge when ordinary explanations feel inadequate.

The Ceremony and Its Prediction

Fat Crack asks Lani whether she knows the duajida, and she identifies it as a nighttime divination ceremony. He tells her that he has performed it for her, addressing her softly as Little Bat Meeter. Each time, he says, the spirits give the same answer: Lani will be two things at once, Kulani O’oks, Medicine Woman, and a doctor. Lani asks whether he means a doctor in a hospital; Fat Crack confirms that he does.

The prediction echoes an earlier turning point in Fat Crack’s own life. When Looks at Nothing told him that he would become a medicine man, Fat Crack initially thought the idea impossible because he was a Christian Scientist. He later came to accept that the two roles could coexist. He also recalls that his aunt, Rita Antone, had told him long ago that Lani’s combined calling would come to pass. For him, the duajida’s repeated answer affirms a possibility that once seemed contradictory in his own life.

Lani’s Turn to Divination

The ceremony takes place within a wider uncertainty about Lani’s family. One night, she pulls on her robe and looks out at the frozen prairie; because the night is not over, she understands that she still has time to perform a duajida of her own. For days she has felt that something is terribly wrong back home. Since Fat Crack is ill, she assumes his condition explains her unease, but no one seems willing to tell her what is happening. Her impulse to seek an answer through divination grows out of that silence.

The episode presents the duajida not as a general explanation for every uncertainty, but as a particular practice Fat Crack uses to interpret spiritual guidance and Lani considers using to discover what others have left unsaid. Its nighttime setting matters in the scene: the remaining hours make the ceremony possible, while Lani’s concern gives that possibility urgency.

Meaning in the Novel

The duajida’s central prediction resists an either-or division between traditional medicine and hospital care. Fat Crack’s own experience has taught him that being a Christian Scientist and becoming a medicine man need not cancel each other out; the forecast for Lani likewise holds two forms of healing together. The ceremony therefore connects his understanding of his own calling with the future he sees for her.

For Lani, the duajida also marks a movement from worry toward an active search for knowledge. When people close to her withhold an explanation, she considers a spiritual practice rather than simply accepting their silence. The evidence establishes her intention to perform the ceremony that night, while leaving the outcome of her own divination unstated.