Based on selected reading of the literature on medical anthropology and the sociology of modern and traditional system integration in other societies (developing and developed), this paper argues that state heteronomy is patently contraindicated, yet inevitable, should the funding and power structure behind Western health care systems be formally integrated with the traditional American Indian healing system. Structured around a comparison of the similarities and differences between the two systems in order to initiate some thoughts about etiology, role expectations, and situational factors that are traceable to the treatment characteristics of the two systems in question, the paper attempts to reflect strengths in the traditional healing system. Tables compare and contrast two divergent orders of information between the Western and traditional health systems. A "curing" versus "healing" model is presented in four tables that attempt to compare the two systems across causation, diagnosis, roles, and treatment processes. Excerpts from the literature which are concerned with traditional and modern interrelationships from a world-system perspective are presented to convey some of the multiple dimensions of medical pluralism. The paper also discusses non-medical interventions and the destructive aspects of large-scale educational efforts to incorporate the traditional into the modern system. (Author/CM)