ABSTRACT
I have begun working with a Yoeme (Yaqui) healer in Mexico who has a very strong type of power available to humans. Simply put, he knows things psychically and can heal people of almost anything. I will not play the anthropological role here of someone who should suspend disbelief, nor speak of him with a false tone of scientific objectivity: I have seen him work; I have apprenticed with him; and he undoubtedly is powerful and successful. I have seen the real-life effects of his work in ways that are astounding and they force me to evaluate basic principles of reality. Of import here is the type of power he exercises. This type of power that he has is called morea, and that makes him a moreakame. We can see it discussed in ethnographies of Yoeme culture.1 Though, when asking him about those categories, he responded, “I do not know about such things. I just am what I am.” His not using a label for himself is a point I will return to in this study, since it works not as a metaphor, but an extension of one Yoeme concept of sexuality, that will then serve as a hypothesis for Indigenous sexuality studies broadly.
