Look at what I saw today....

[catchersmitt]

Greenville, NC
Barnes and Nobles Booksellers

Regular price: $29.99
Sale price: $5.98

They have this boxed kit that allows you to become a Native American shaman. It was writen by some medical doctor. The kit includes a medicine pouch, and some little round wood pieces shapped like stones that have pictures of animals such as foxes and owls on them (well the animals were actually burned in the wood). The kit also claims to have everything you need to make your own medicine wheels and related stuff.

I opened the boxed kit up and read excepts of the book inside - mostly prayers - no animal worship junk or anything like that.

[Linda]

You will get NDN people thoroughly upset with you over that. In their own cultures, people spend their entire lifetimes learning to be medicine or holy people, and everything they do in their lives is dictated by that commitment. It takes a very special kind of person, living a very disciplined life to have the right to claim those skills. There's been a huge outcry over the commercialism and trivialization of their religion. They see it as the final and ultimate theft of their cultures.

I guess it would be kind of like a $6 kit that enabled you to baptize someone in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and grant them eternal Salvation.

I'm sure you're intentions are innocent, but you will be annoying the heck out of people by what they perceive as a lack of respect and understanding. The kit may be explaining a tiny bit of a system of thought, a philosophy, a spirituality that's new to you and it probably has some educational value on that basis, but you will do best to keep a low profile on it.

That $6 Holy Ghost baptism kit might be good in that it gives people some rudimentary ideas about Christian religion, and perhaps whets their appetite to delve further, but it would be a travesty for them to believe that they knew what they needed to know and they now had Eternity covered. And if it happened to have an authentic Catholic communion wafer in the kit, the Pope might get real annoyed.

As far as I know, native religions do not have a devil. But there are many spirits. All things in nature have a spirit. Even a rock has a spirit. No spirits are evil as Christians perceive it, but some are beneficial to humans, and some are not. If you start fooling around with some of those forces, you could easily be invoking something that is not what you had in mind -- it could be something like investigating atomic particles by splitting an atom, you may get a bigger bang than you bargained for.

[coyote]

Good reply Linda informitive and insightful.
Wado Angie

[Linda]

Pila huc

[catchersmitt]

Linda:

You should have known better to think that I may have purchased the book in an attempt to become a shaman. Especially after that big dicussion on the Tuscaroras.com site that I had with Craig about the subject.

I just opened the box and digged inside!

Oh yeah, there was a little compass in that kit as well. Looked just like the little one I saw on TV last night where this astronomer working for some government agency opened up a box of Cracker Jacks and pulled one out.

As for NDN people who spend a lifetime studying medicine, I can already relate to them. I have been in college for 4 years and I am not even half way done yet.

As for annoying people, well I am a natural at that already - just ask my ex-girlfriend!

[Linda]

I stopped reading T.com a long time ago. It was an excellent board, but I didn't have the time to keep up with it, so I don't know what you and Craig talked about.

What you said could be interpreted by any passerby reading it as an endorsement of kits that teach you to become a shaman. I don't have much choice but to make it clear that that's not what this site is about.

You probably have no idea how intense the heat is over this. I've heard of people travelling half way across the country to take part in a tribal ceremony they thought they were welcome at, only to have some folks crash the event and send them home at the point of a shotgun. I'm sure you don't wish to pull all of us into a stink like that over an idle comment about something you were mildly curious about.

People are furious about this stuff. Why they are, what the backstory is to all that, is some really important stuff to be learning. It will all dovetail back to what your own Ancestors want you to know.

[Patty]

I've seen similar kits that are supposed to teach you voodoo or divination.

Of course, it boils down to somebody trying to make a buck, but the way they do that is to trivialize the symbols and tools of power or spirituality of those who are not part of the dominant social power structure.

It's sometimes very difficult for those who ARE part of the dominant social power group to understand how this is racism/classism.

.....my 2 cents.

[mrspatino]

I think when we are all on spiritual journeys we pick up things we think might be interesting or might spark some sort of spiritual gift inside of us, especially when we dont grow up with our NDN teachings, language and spirituality that so many of us were robbed of. Sometimes we think a kit, or some taro cards or whatever will bring us closer to the Creator and a deeper spirituality because the need or accessibility to our teachings is sometimes difficult for whatever reason.
As far as becoming a medicine person through a kit, well I think most of us know and accept that above all the Creator and the Creator alone gives the medicine people those gifts, I have learned that people who claim to be teachers are people who want their own recogognition. The people I have experienced that are the real thing are the people who say that they are nobody special and all gifts come from the Creator above all things.
I just think that is what we need to remember the most, the more selfless dedication we have to Wakan Tanka the more we are blessed.
Put your money back in your pockets, because no kit will help us get there. We will get there when we are humble and give ourselves to Wakan Tanka the Creator. (or Creator in your language who ever might read this.
Remember Creator/God Loves us all:p

[TuckahoePrincess]

I'm known for collecting stuff like that-- strange bargains, not "Make-you-a-shaman-in however-many-steps".... hehehe... I would have bought it, and placed it right by my antique plastic "red glass" lamps and my altar to Buddha (even though I'm not Buddhist). I'm a bit sacrilegious like that... hehe... I wouldn't have messed with it though... Or, actually, I would buy it so some little Wiccan-wannabe teeny-bopper couldn't buy it. I'm a spoil-sport like that. hahaha....

I'm a senior in college-- finally. Senioritis is SOOO bad, considering all of my obligations for this semester! ;)

Oh, hey, y'all! Just checking in! I've been busy organizing Sex Awareness Month for my campus-- yes, believe it or not. hahaha... I'm really excited, because one of the ex-editors of Playgirl is coming to talk... which should be interesting, considering that we're in the middle of a cornfield! :)

~TuckahoePrincess (yes, I know, I'm a little obsessed with Tuckahoe... I am bound and determined to find out the truth!....If only I could get ahold of that Tuckahoe and Cohee book by Catherine Seaman from the Library of Virginia...) :)

[vance hawkins]

stuff like that is a waste of time -- it is a fraud to lure the gullible, and nothing more

[CoheeLady]

Vance,
I agree with you 100%!
Coheeslady

[Linda]

Great site on the subject, I just had to pass it along.

http://w3.arizona.edu/~aisp/shaman.html