Navajo Marine granted honorable discharge based on his rare spiritual healing powers

Tallman comes from a line of both warriors and healers, which might explain his decision to join the military, but also his rare, spiritual gift bestowed upon him as a Navajo that teaches him to heal, not hurt people.

For the 21-year-old Tuba City native, killing an insect or butchering sheep — not to mention picking up a gun and serving in the military — is out of the question now that he's part of a special group of certified medicine men known as hand tremblers.

Tallman applied last year for conscientious-objector status, seeking an honorable discharge based on religious beliefs. After nearly a year of waiting for his paperwork to filter through the proper channels, Marine Commandant Gen. James T. Conway turned him down Jan. 11 and his lawyers decided to go to court.

But on Wednesday, his attorney Steve Boos said the Marines reversed course and approved the application, saying Tallman would be discharged within three weeks.

"I didn't expect this," Tallman said when reached by phone. "I'm really happy right now."

A call Thursday morning to Marine Gunnery Sgt. Christopher Cox in Twentynine Palms, Calif., where Tallman is stationed, was not immediately returned.

At 19, Tallman enlisted in the Marines, never foreseeing his tribal belief would conflict with the military.

When he started boot camp, he recalls chants that ended with the new Marines shouting the word, "kill." He recalled being scolded as a young boy for saying he would kill an animal, and wondered whether he could continue on with the Marines.

"It was emotionally tearing me apart because I didn't know whether to follow my heart or fill this commitment," he said.

Tallman said he believes the Holy People, or deities, were keeping watch over him during his yearlong struggle after which he discovered he had the traditional form of spiritual diagnosing and healing that allows medicine men to sense people's illnesses and problems.

"We're their children, and they know all of us as Navajos, individually, and I think they could sense I was suffering. I didn't know what to do, basically, and I kept praying, asking for an answer."

Now Tallman is focused on learning more about the practice given to him by the sacred entity known in Navajo as teehn leii.

"I'm going to start learning from all the people I grew up listening to," he said. "I'm going to sit down with them and pick their brain."

Tallman's mother, Nora, said she's proud of her son for standing up for his beliefs and looks forward to him joining other hand tremblers on the reservation.

"Our medicine men, some of them are getting too old, and some have gone," she said. "And we do need medicine men to help people. . . . It's a good thing that he got this gift."

Tallman was sanctified as a hand trembler in a ceremony conducted by his uncle and grandfather. He then became a certified medicine man with the Dine Hataalii Association, a group of medicine men.

"I want to use it to help people," Tallman said of his gift. "It just really opened my eyes to who I am and who I'm not. I'm not a killer."

With deployment papers fresh in hand, Tallman returned to the Navajo Nation for leave in November 2005. Tallman said he didn't know much about hand trembling before the trip in which he discovered he had been given the unexpected, lifelong gift.

"I had a very powerful experience where my left hand started to shake, and at the same time, an amazing feeling of calmness came over me," he said in his application for conscientious-objector status. "My heart slowed down, and my breathing, and I felt peaceful. My hand kept trembling and I started to notice the energy in the people around me and I started to know things about them that I could never have known, things about their lives and what made them sick or in pain."

With that, Tallman is in a position to restore physical, mental and spiritual well-being to some people, said his aunt, Cora Maxx-Phillips.