LAUSR

Throughout 2017 Glencairn Museum featured a collaborative exhibition in cooperation with the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University, entitled Powwowing in Pennsylvania: Healing Rituals of the Dutch Country. Among the very first and largest of its kind, this exhibition offered a rare glimpse of original healing manuscripts, ritual objects, protective religious blessings, and a wide range of material culture representative of Pennsylvania’s distinctive healing traditions. Known as powwowing, or Braucherei in the Pennsylvania Dutch vernacular language, meaning customs, ceremonies, and practices, these traditions encompass a wide spectrum of rituals for the health and healing of humans and livestock. Combining the use of benedictions, prayers, gestures, and the use of everyday objects, a powwow practitioner performs rituals not only for healing but also for protection from physical and spiritual harm, help in times of danger, and assurance of positive outcomes in everyday affairs. Although the word powwow is Native American, this term has since the eighteenth century also described practices of European origin. Powwowing is the most common designation today for the ritual healing traditions of the Pennsylvania Dutch. These are not Native American practices, but they share many similarities with other traditional healing systems throughout the world. These healing practices are passed on by word of mouth and recorded in private manuscripts, as both an historical and a living tradition among the descendants of eighteenth-century immigrants from German-speaking lands, comprising one of the oldest surviving expressions of European folk belief in North America. With roots in the Roman Catholic consensus of the Middle Ages, converging with the post-Reformation Pietist movements among Protestants, powwowing is a byproduct of transatlantic religious and cultural exchange. As the most ethnically and religiously diverse of the original thirteen colonies, Pennsylvania provided the fertile soil for such traditions to flourish and spread throughout North America. Prayers invoking the Trinity and the saints were used to treat a wide range of illnesses. Warts were banished in the light of the waxing moon, and common everyday objects such as a broom, a shoe, a horse collar, or an egg could render subtle services for the benefit of humanity. Ritual objects of power, tailored to the individual needs of practitioners, such as canes, stones, carvings, and dolls, were employed in healing rituals as deeply personal expressions of identity and empowerment. The methods and materials of ritual practice within the Pennsylvania Dutch cultural region have varied considerably over three centuries. The outcomes and experiences surrounding this tradition have woven a rich tapestry of cultural narratives that highlight the integration of ritual into all aspects of life, as well as provide insight into the challenges, conflicts, growth, and development of a distinct Pennsylvania Dutch folk culture. Aiming to provide a respectful and thought-provoking environment for the exploration of ritual experiences with parallels across the globe, this collaboration brought powwowing to audiences in Greater Philadelphia. Glencairn Museum engages a diverse audience with the common human endeavor to find higher meaning and purpose in our lives. This is achieved by recognizing universal spiritual concepts expressed in religious beliefs and practices around the world—past and present—through the interpretation of art, artifacts, and other cultural expressions of faith. Glencairn seeks to stimulate reflection, build understanding, and foster empathy, contributing to the betterment of society by looking to the goodness in others and living a life of kindness. These values were reflected in the exhibition’s multicultural orientation, with the hope of inspiring dialogue about traditional ritual expressions in many cultures. As part of a spectrum of traditional health belief systems in the USA, powwowing within the Pennsylvania Dutch community is comparable to other folk-cultural and ethnic healing practices in North America such as Benedicaria or “Passing” among Italian-Americans, Root-Work in the Deep South, Santeria of the Caribbean and southern USA, curanderismo in the southwest, “granny doctors” in southern Appalachia, and the healing traditions of the Cajun traiteur, all of which blend ritual, faith, and healing. Although elaborate powwowing manuscripts and ritual objects are visually captivating and sometimes enigmatic, a number of significant challenges were identified from the outset that steered the direction and development of the exhibition. We anticipated numerous questions as well as some concerns and tensions surrounding cultural appropriation and the definition of ethnic and religious identities. Highlighting sensitive issues of discretion and agency in the communities from which these practices and objects proceed, we aimed to present Material Religion volume 14, issue 1, pp. 144–147