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When I first read this topic... I thought, "This reminds me of those Plastic Jesus's on the dash boards of cars"

The Rise of the Plastic Medicine Men
By Ward Churchill, The Moccasin Telegraph,
24 August 1996

Yes, I know of Sun Bear. He's a plastic medicine man.

--Matthew King
Oglala Lakota Elder
1985

The past 20 years have seen the birth of a new growth industry in the United States. Known as American Indian Spiritualism, this profitable enterprise apparently began with a number of literary hoaxes undertaken by such non-Indians Carlos Castaneda, J. Marks (aka Jamake Highwater, author of _The Primal Mind_, etc.), Ruth Beebe Hill (of _Hanta Yo_ notoriety), and Lynn Andrews (_Medicine Woman_, _Jaguar Woman_, _Crystal Woman_, _Spirit Woman_, etc.). A few Indians such as Alonzo Blacksmith (aka: Chunksa Yuha, the Indian authenticator of _Hanta Yo_), Chief Red Fox (_Memoirs of Chief Red Fox_) and Hyemeyohsts Storm (_Seven Arrows_, etc.) also cashed in, writing bad distortions and outright lies about indigenous spirituality for consumption in the mass market. The authors grew rich peddling their trash while real Indians starved to death, out of the sight and mind of America.

This situation has been long and bitterly attacked by legitimate Indian scholars, from Vine Deloria, Jr. to Bea Medicine, and by activists such as the American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Russell Means, Survival of American Indians (SAIL) director Hank Adams, and the late Gerald Wilkenson, head of the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC). Nonetheless, the list of phony books claiming alternately to debunk or expose the innermost meanings of Indian spirituality continues to grow as publishers recognize a sure-fire money-maker when they see one. Most lately, ostensibly scholarly publishers like the University of Chicago Press have joined the parade, generating travesties such as University of Colorado Professor Sam Gill's _Mother Earth: An American Story_.


The insistence of mainstream America upon buying such nonsense has led Deloria to conclude that, White people in this country are so alienated from their own lives and so hungry for some sort of real life that they'll grasp at any straw to save themselves. But high tech society has given them a taste for the 'quick fix.' They want their spirituality prepackaged in such a way as to provide *instant* insight, the more sensational and preposterous the better. They'll pay big bucks to anybody dishonest enough to offer them spiritual salvation after reading the right book or sitting still for the right fifteen minute session. And, of course, this opens them up to every kind of mercenary hustler imaginable. Its all very pathetic, really.

Oren Lyons, a traditional chief of the Onondaga Nation, concedes Deloria's point, but says the problem goes much deeper. Non-Indians have become so used to all this hype on the part of impostors and liars that when a real Indian spiritual leader tries to offer them useful advice, he is rejected. He isn't 'Indian' enough for all these non-Indian experts on Indian religion. Now, this is not only degrading to Indian people, it's downright delusional behavior on the part of the instant experts who think they've got all the answers before they even hear the questions.

The bottom line here, says Lyons, is that we have more need for intercultural respect today than at any time in human history. And nothing blocks respect and communication faster and more effectively than delusions by one party about another. We've got real problems today, tremendous problems which threaten the survival of the planet. Indians and non-Indians *must* confront these problems together, and this means we *must* have honest dialogue, but this dialogue is impossible so long as non-Indians remain deluded about things as basic as Indian spirituality.

Things would be bad enough if American Indian realities were being distorted only through books and movies. But, since 1970, there has also been a rapid increase in the number of individuals purporting to sell Indian wisdom in a more practical way. Following the Maharaji Ji, who have built lucrative careers marketing bastardizations of East Asian mysticism, these new entrepreneurs have begun cleaning up on selling Native American Ceremonies for a fee.

As Janet McCloud, a long-time fishing rights activist and elder of the Tulalip Nation, puts it, First they came to take our land and water, then our fish and game. Then they wanted our mineral resources and, to get them, they tried to take our governments. Now they want our religions as well. All of a sudden, we have a lot of unscrupulous idiots running around saying they're medicine people. And they'll sell you a sweat lodge ceremony for fifty bucks. It's not only wrong, its obscene. Indians don't sell their spirituality to anybody, for any price. This is just another in a very long series of thefts from Indian people and, in some ways, this is the worst one yet.

McCloud is scornful of the many non-Indian individuals who have taken up such practices professionally. These people run off to reservations acting all lost and hopeless, really pathetic. So, some elder is nice enough, considerate enough to be kind to them, and how do they repay this generosity? After fifteen minutes with a spiritual leader, they consider themselves 'certified' medicine people, and then run amok, 'spreading the word'—for a fee. Some of them even proclaim themselves to be 'official spiritual representatives' of various Indian peoples. I'm talking about people like Dyhani Ywahoo and Lynn Andrews. It's absolutely disgusting.

But her real disdain is for those Indians who have taken up the practice of marketing their heritage to the highest bidder. We've also got Indians who are doing these things, McCloud continues. We've got our Sun Bears and our Wallace Black Elks and others who'd sell their own mother if they thought it would turn a quick buck. What they're selling isn't theirs to sell, and they know it. They're thieves and sell-outs, and they know that too. That's why you never see them around Indian people anymore. When we have our traditional meetings and gatherings, you never see the Sun Bears and those sorts showing up.

As Thomas Banyacya, a spiritual elder of the Hopi, explains, these people have nothing to say on the matters they claim to be so expert about. To whites, they claim they're 'messengers,' but from whom? They are not the messengers of Indian people. I am a messenger, and I do not charge for my ceremonies.

Some of the more sophisticated marketeers, such as Sun Bear, have argued that the criticisms of McCloud and Banyacya are misguided. Sun Bear has claimed that the ceremonies and wisdom he peddles are not truly Indian, although they are still based on Indian traditions. Yet, his promotional literature still refers to Native American Spiritual Wisdom, and offers ceremonies such as the sweat lodge for $50 per person, and vision quests at $150.

Since when is the sweat not an Indian ceremony? demands Russell Means, an outspoken critic of Sun Bear and his colleagues. It's not 'based on' an Indian ceremony, it *is* an Indian ceremony. So is his so-called 'vision quest,' the pipe, his use of the pipe, sage and all the rest of it. Sun Bear is a liar, and so are all the rest of them who are doing what he's doing. All of them know good and well that the only reason anybody is buying their product is because of this image of Indian-ness they project. The most non-Indian thing about Sun Bear's ceremonies is that he's personally prostituted the whole thing by tuning it into a money-making venture.

Sun Bear has also contended that criticism of his activities is ill-founded because he has arrived at a spiritual stew of several traditions—his medicine wheel is Shoshoni and his herbal and other healing remedies accrue from numerous peoples, while many of his other ceremonies are Lakota in origin—and because he's started his own tribe, of which he's pronounced himself medicine chief. Of course, membership in this odd new entity, composed almost exclusively of Euroamericans, comes with a hefty price tag attached. The idea has caught on among spiritual hucksters, as witnessed by the formation of a similar fees-paid group in Florida, headed by a non-Indian calling himself Chief Piercing Eyes.

This is exactly the problem, says Nilak Butler, an Inuit activist working in San Francisco. Sun Bear says he's not revealing some sort of secret Indian ways whenever there are Indians around to hear him. The rest of the time, he's the most 'Indian' guy around, to hear him tell it. Whenever he's doing his spiel, anyway. But, you see, if there were any truth to his rap, he wouldn't have to be running around starting 'new tribes' and naming himself head honcho and dues collector. He'd be a leader among his own people.

According to Rick Williams, a Cheyenne/Lakota working at the University of colorado, Sun Bear isn't recognized as any sort of leader, spiritual or otherwise, among his own Chippewa people. He's not qualified. It takes a lifetime of apprenticeship to become the sort of spiritual leader Sun Bear claims to be, and he never went through any of that. He's just a guy who hasn't been home to the White Earth Reservation in 25 years, pretending to be something he's not, feeding his own ego and making his living misleading a lot of sincere, but very silly people. In a lot of ways he reminds you of a low grade Jimmy Swaggart or Pat Robertson-type individual.

Williams goes on, Sun Bear hasn't started a new tribe. *Nobody* can just up and start a new tribe. What he's done is start a cult. And this cult he's started is playing with some very powerful things, like the pipe. That's not only stupid and malicious, it's *dangerous*.

The danger Williams refers to has to do with the very power which makes American Indian spirituality appealing to non-Indians in the first place. According to the late Matthew King, an elder spiritual leader among the Oglala Lakota, Each part of our religion has its power and its purpose. Each people has their own ways. You cannot mix these ways together, because each people's ways are balanced. Destroying balance is a disrespect and very dangerous. This is why it's forbidden.

Many things are forbidden in our religion, King continued. The forbidden things are acts of disrespect, things which unbalance power. These things must be learned, and the learning is very difficult. This is why there are very few real 'medicine men' among us; only a few are chosen. For someone who has not learned how our balance is maintained, to pretend to be a medicine man is very, very dangerous. It is a big disrespect to the powers and can cause great harm to whoever is doing it, to those he claims to be teaching, to nature, to everything. It is very bad. . .

For all the above reasons, the Circle of Elders of the Indigenous Nations of North America, the representative body of traditional indigenous leadership on this continent, requested that the American Indian Movement undertake to end the activities of those described as plastic medicine men. The possibly sexist descipitor refers to individuals of both genders trading in the commercialization of indigenous spirituality. At its National Leadership Conference in 1984, AIM passed a resolution indicating that the will of the elders would be implemented. Specifically mentioned in the AIM resolution were Sun Bear and the so-called Bear Tribe Medicine Society and Wallace Black Elk and [the late] Grace Spotted Eagle of Denver, Colorado, as well as others like Cyfus McDonald, Brook Medicine Eagle (spelled Ego in the resolution), Osheana Fast Wolf and a corporation dubbed Vision Quest. Others, such as Dyhani Ywahoo, Rolling Thunder, and Beautiful Painted Arrow have been subsequently added to the list.

As Russell Means put it at the time, These people have insisted upon making themselves pariahs within their own communities, and they will have to bear the consequences of that. As to white people who think it's cute, or neat or groovy or keen to hook up with plastic medicine men, to subsidize and promote them, and claim you and they have some fundamental 'right' to desecrate our spiritual traditions, I've got a piece of news for you. You have *no* such right. Our religions are *ours*. Period. We have very strong reasons for keeping certain things private, whether you understand them or not. And we have every human right to deny them to you, whether you like it or not.

You can either respect our basic rights or not respect them, Means went on. If you do, you're an ally and we're ready and willing to join hands with you on other issues. If you do not, you are at best a thief. More importantly, you are a thief of the sort who is willing to risk undermining our sense of integrity of our cultures for your own perceived self-interest. That means you are complicit in a process of cultural genocide, or at least attempted cultural genocide, aimed at American Indian people. That makes you an enemy, to say the least. And believe me when I say we're prepared to deal with you as such.

Almost immediately, the Colorado AIM chapter undertook a confrontation with Sun Bear in the midst of a $500 per head, weekend-long spiritual retreat being conducted near the mountain town of Granby. The action provoked the following endorsement from the normally more staid NIYC:

The National Indian Youth Council fully supports your efforts to denounce, embarrass, disrupt or otherwise run out of Colorado, the Medicine Wheel Gathering. . .For too long the Bear Tribe Medicine Society has been considered repugnant but harmless to Indian people. We believe they not only line their pockets but do great damage to all of us. Anything you can do to them will not be enough.

The Colorado AIM action, and the strength of indigenous support it received, resulted in a marked diminishment of Sun Bear's reliance upon the state as a source of revenue.

Since then, AIM has aligned itself solidly and consistently with indigenous traditionalism, criticizing Sun Bear and others of his ilk in public fashion, and occasionally physically disrupting their activities in location as diverse as Denver and Atlanta. Those who wish to assist in this endeavor should do so by denouncing plastic medicine folk wherever they appear, organizing pro-active boycotts of their events, and demanding that local book stores stop carrying titles, not only by Sun Bear and his non- Indian sidekick Wabun, but charlatans like Castaneda, Jamake Highwater, Lynn Andrews and Hyemeyohsts Storm as well. Use your imagination as to how get the job done in your area, but make it stick. You should also be aware that Sun Bear and others have increasingly aligned themselves with such non-Indian support groups as local police departments, calling upon them to protect him from Indian interference with his unauthorized sale of Indian spirituality.

^^interesting read.

wasn't to long ago that ward churchill was fed to the wolves.

don't know the outcome, but guess it was an internal thing within aim.

>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Very important that you are writing this, and i thank you (to quote a 59 yr old street Inuit i knew in AK when i was 21; he always said 'i thank you' like that and i've never forgotten him (longer story)).

i've read a lot of Churchill, but not the one you mention; especially moved to hear this about Sun Bear. That about Hyemeyohsts Storm's and his (?) _Seven Arrows_ surprises me, because of the art that was in it (and well-put-together at that). Tho i admit to wondering about the story within it.



Very good to see others saying this, especially:


Tho when i think of the white people i know ("working class") i know that there should be some mention of the *types* of white folks we could be discussing, in order to "tease out" (as the saying goes) the less-easy-to-see truths. For instance, many of the people that i *have* seen Churchill dissing categorically (was it in _Indians Are Us?_?) have been those uncritically following the authorities behind the 'men's movement' (which i never had enough money to explore, frankly). i remember feeling that Churchill was taking liberties by judging an entire group of people at the time; nowadays, having studied *educated culture* and the *chain-of-command* attitudes that i think prevail within such groups, formalized and perhaps not (along with most of everything else in corralled society norms), i have to think more critically.

i've seen the situation on quite a few other angles, as well. This *chain-of-command* situation which most 'citizens' fall in line with withouth thinking such through (so deeply colonized as so many of us are).

As for the other stuff there, i don't feel i can adequately speak in text about that.



Excellent. And i wish to add that again, 'we' are going to have to be overtly conscious about which colonized persons we have these 'honest' dialogues with. Because, by and large most who would dialogue are coming in with an *internalized value system* that basically reflects the stupid-ized imagination of the corralled.

i'm probably not saying this as plainly as i might in person...then again, text can be "easier" in some ways, and other ways, not. i.e. inflections.

As a general rule, my view is that the "more educated" (institutionally) that one is, the less they will be "honest". Because they've been divided away from being a human being in such a big way. i'm saying that these folks have learned to armor their hearts, and only by spending *meaningful* time (say, camping, while canoeing on a rough river) with them, including over a lengthy period of informal friendship, can one begin to "tease away" that armor.

Because people who have been colonized for thousands of years just do not have the same kind of connection to other human beings, i think, that peoples colonized for less time have (and often take for granted); and that alienation is added to more when one goes thru the institutionalization of human beings; whether it is via what is called "higher education" in 'Western Democracies', or even basic education and so on.

Look, i've been through this myself, and i used to buy the whole thing hook, line, and sinker. And even when i *began* to wake up on broad terms (because i found meaningful value in such awareness), i *also* saw, from an "ex-insider's" view how deeply-leashed many deeply- colonized people are.

It's like that what the Lakota John Trudell talks about: the *chain-of-command* thing is deeply *planted in* us, and we *don't give ourselves PERMISSION* to think through things.



i just want to (p)oint out that who 'they' were, if you want to demystify things and get to the heart of it, who 'they' were and are, were and are often the formal leaders; the ones who've been Given medals (i.e. PhDs) from Oz and now permit themselves to "lead" (and sometimes do have real merit). Many of these Oz-'experts' (i'm lacking a better label) *know not what they do* and are, in my limited view, utilized as tools by statecraft as usual.

That's the thing right there, people who are acting from their hearts but in a superficial way, because they're not conscious of how deeply their programming and conditioning has been. The Left (including the "progressives"), even a lot of what is called 'anarchism' doesn't point these things out; they seem to most often *stuck* in a superficial consciousness.

Only a few whom've been KICKED OUT of the meta games so many play (like myself, i claim), can *allow themselves* to explore and begin to articulate reality beyond these corralls. But even then, many kicked out do not; usually we turn to numbing ourselves in so many ways--a lot of y'all know what i'm talkin about--drinking, drugging, violent sports, all these things that are kept very shallow. We never think of using these tools (instead of them using us) and *permit* ourselves to get re-connected with our pre-colonized heritage. Why? Because *we* generally do not fathom it.

It's like the young student who hates book reading. Why do they hate it? Because the schools' shallow methods of teaching reading, with meaningless books (called "classics", and often deeply watered-down to fit local or federal politics), have POISONED them. But they don't see it, and they just avoid reading. They don't even *look for* meaningful books, so poisoned they are.

So the same with 'citizens' who cannot see that beer, drugs, and even violence can be tools that can find meaning. That's a crucial insight. And one aboriginals (pardon me if that's a disrespectful word; i didn't think it was) ought to pose to those who would dialogue with them.




That's a key word, there: professionally. Basically, colonized people take up the *frames of references* all around them. Quite uncritically! They've been planted with the idea that such references are "objective" or "acceptable", and don't see the polytricks hidden within them.

Again, there is a "class difference" here, though. The "educated" buy such values hook, line, and sinker--in the context of the "society" they take for granted, and want to be "successful" in.




We are generally a 'sick' people, in my view. i like Aldous Huxley's view on that one, from _Brave New World--REVISITED_ (quoting Erich Fromm, with discussion):

"The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal.

'Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.' They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness.

These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish 'the illusion of individuality,' but in fact they have been to a great extent deindividualized. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity."

(want the source page for this? Just ask)

So, seeing and feeling this, i say that aboriginals (with so much of their depth culture still intact) ought to look upon colonized folks in the same way you might with lost brothers out in the park drinking themselves to death (that's not to say that *all* are doing only this!). You have to make yourself clear, and not believe someone just because they appear to know "what's up".

It's like in the rap milieu. Lots of white folks don the trappings, but don't, for the life of them, have the heart. Just don't have it. i know, i was there in it (in the 80s) and was one of the "early" youth to be adopted, so to speak. Remember Vanilla Ice? He was your "normal" superficial 'player'.



Well, i don't know about that at all. My intuition wants to butt in and say that maybe aboriginal folks can sometimes be hyped-up like any other group (especially since many aboriginals are now being "educated"; look at all the folks who jumped on the hysteria bandwagon against Russell Means on nativecalling.org's inter-tribal radio show; i bet they still have that episode up on their website; there was (and is still?) a *concerted effort* to discredit him, and i think that may've stemmed from his refusal to take the "progressive" line starting with the Sandinista/Miskito situation.

Maybe i'm wrong, and way off base; i don't agree with everything Russell Means says, but what i agree with (like some of the depth in his article "For America To Live..." on his website) speaks to me in ways that moves me to expose that a lot of people would like to shut him up.

So i wonder if that kind of thing was launched on some of these guys who uncritically (?) bought into capitalism (or something that appears, or we are led to believe appears that way).

i know i'm pulling out a can of worms, but aboriginals are people like anyone else. But with connections and traditions and cultural norms that the rest of us have had taken from us. No one is "perfect", unless they're "perfectly imperfect" (i'm still thinking thru that one!).



i'll take your word for this for now. Tho i wonder, having read *only one* of his books; with him obviously having financial struggles (i.e. the indian house he had going on for awhile). i dissent from his moralism (which looks to me like an uncritical reflection of colonizer norms)...i'd give an example but my memory is hazey right now. Something about some young folks who were using drugs or something like that at his old mobile home park who he dealt with in a most uncritical way, and came back to his readers with a puffed-out moralism.



Well, i think i would move out of my place if i said what i thinc here. i'll wait for y'all to ask, and if you don't, i'll bite my lip.




Okay, i can't hold back. So, how about stopping playing this tit for tat game and come up with something that inspires the uncritical? Something that complements things and does ju-jitsu on them. Not something that just adds to these divisions that play right into the hands of statecraft!



i'm wondering if the *perception* being forwarded and fomented is not working to put a dam in the beautiful river of traditional aboriginal ways MORE THAN the *possibly* unintended/confused ways of Sun Bear and his contemporaries.

i'm wondering if such persons (along with ANYONE who brings challenge--no matter how inarticulate--to traditions) *might* be looked as a VALUABLE asset. Maybe a heyoka type of person, or something. i suspect that those with wisdom already do this; now if only the "activists" could see this as well!

i mean, this internal hysteria, merited or not, or in a grey area of merit, *just* sounds like the same old b.s. you find in all formalized religions. So i'm wondering if the rigidity is tooling people when YOU/WE *COULD* be looking these developments in angles which INSPIRE all involved!




Okay, so he's not deep. i think any critical reader of books like those Sun Bear puts out can see this quite quickly!

But what you're concerned with is the mass that is *believing* that they are "trained" and have really been conned; and how some of these people will get beligerent because they refuse to imagine that they have. And then, of course, aboriginal peoples don't want to deal with that alienation.

So how to proceed? i thinc the situation is dire because the situation in general *is* dire, period. Better to intervene artfully, to be *realize the value of being radically excellent with each other* in my view!

Then the reflections that come from such will be the kind of reflections which *we all* want and desire in our lost, but basically *good* intentions!

Whattya thinc?



Wow. i didn't know.



i guess he's found out what that's like nowadays...



Again, i feel you've made assumptions, and you've taken this stuff personally way too much. YES, this momentum has to be stopped! YES these people know not what they do! BUT falling back on *alienation WAR* tactics only brings those reflections!

And i thinc this is a crucial truth that *everyone* (including the most radical europeon post-left anarchists) have missed, so deeply in pain so many of us are.

i deeply feel, very strongly (and have been backing this up with actions cross-country), that it's high time critical thinkers, aboriginal or otherwise, went to *radically excellent war*, not these same old songs and dances!

Thinc about it!



And i completely agree, given the reality of most of what colonized society can't help but to be.

Me, i'm all for exploring and inspiring something old and new that goes beyond what i see are the limitations of traditional ways (across the spectrum!) and into the places (i assume) that pre-europeon traditionals *allowed themselves*, no, PERMITTED THEMSELVES to be:

Leading their own traditions as input into the system moved their communities!

So here's the vision i'm taking and running with: a spanarchy of ways of being and doing which realizes the value of consciousness about formal and so-called 'elite' systems and the ways those systems have a way of tooling all who 'submit'. All arting ourselves, whenever we feel like it, towards realizing the value of being RADICALLY EXCELLENT with each other and what i call the crucial arts (not the martial arts).

And when someone chooses to assume and chooses to take things personally (as has happened in my experience before), i "hope" to find ways to art that person and their beliefs so that they become what "Little John" was to "Robin Hood".

And if i can inspire a few others, maybe we can work/play as a team to artfully intervene, mess with the mind-set of the alienated (whether intensely violent or not), derail them from such hysteria, and seek to radically bridge with the beautiful human that they are within their fortressed mind-set and armored heart.

A crazy idea, no? But i see that it is my path and makes me love livin on this planet. And *when* it is my time to leave this dimension (i'm really working myself up, now, {; ), at least i followed what i deeply feel iz my path.

Ooops, now i've gone and done it again; being "too intense"...well, i'm just still preparing myself for what is to most assuredly come (and i'm not speaking as a totally inexperienced firebrand, either; i've put my life on the line for my heart quite a few times in very heated circumstances).



This thing that he (and others) choose to *always* call disrespect may well NOT be when it comes from informal, human hearts.

So *i* see a GIFT being waged underneath all of this same old song and dance. The gift i see, but which hyped-up people like yourself don't seem to want to see, or cannot see, is that human beings are being provoked to fall back on the beauty that they are in their hearts, not the programming we've all had planted in our minds!!!!!



Hmmm, he was relying on the state, eh?


Disrupting i can see. Totally. That said, i'd foolly(?) say that the aboriginals ought to TEACH, not fall back into the alienation war methods compelled into them for the last 500 years.

Dealing with *formal institutions and their soldiers* in physically blocking ways (as i'm assuming happened, per AIM's history) makes a lot of sense, but for those informal persons, caught trying to find an albeit lost attempt at re-connection to the Earth and their hearts, i don't see this tactic working except to backfire. But what do i know, eh?



This doesn't surprise me, given the reality of his and these others' lack of critical consciousness!

The bottom line: You're dealing with crippled people. People who have been forcefully crippled in their minds and mind-sets (via "normal" socialization") since day one (basically). By smashing back at them you only engage in the alienation they not only Know well, but have perfected to an evil art, i.e. "normal" u.s. foreign policy and the "norms" of modern statecraft everywhere.

i have opened my heart here and i expect you to hear me in the way i intend, even when i am shown to be mistaken and ignorant and even problematic in my speaking here. Even all i have been thru on my own spiritual path cannot make me "perfect" (but, again, "perfectly imperfect").

i "hope" you will see the value of speaking to me as you would wish to be spoken to.

Thank you for that excellent post. I have been so completely busy that I really haven't been online this past week and i'm still running around this house like a chicken with its head cut off.. trying to clean up after my child and fiance.. I'll try to make a good post this week.

Maya

here are some recent "musings", quoting from a post i made elsewhere (link can be shared if wanted) :



i see there is a charge of $25 'tuition' [on a native service/interaction offered], and i see such words being used and think about this as a way to bridge with the colonized, within their experience/language, but i have to wonder about how this way of speaking/singing seals the sharer from the beginning (away from the intended depth experience-connection).

Or if the "sharee" would not be able at all to hear these ways were it not for this technological language, and if that is necessarily such a bad thing?

And wondering if it might be a better idea to not play into this thing seeing a trap there that i see as being hidden. You interest those whom are subordinated to such words, such values as monetary payment and 'reputable' words, and they already cannot escape those. Those are *more meaningful* than other ways. And they consume these experiences because they are so deeply tooled, so deeply colonized.

Thus, to exchange a part of who they are, a part of their humanity, for the spiritual experience you are opening them to, they automatically see as "not worth as much as" $25! And such things.

Do you see from where i am trying to speak?

So on the other hand, to be "nude" about ourselves from the outset, in the perfectly imperfect (?) capacity we can be, brings at least a potential for a mirroring of that.

Unless we don't really want that kind of intensity.

Maybe those who sell ceremonies just want to make a living outside of the rat race, and you can see why they do this. But i think this is why some of the traditionals are feeling the need to defend themselves. Because it is a lessening of the strength of these ways.

My mind is not made up about this topic and i would like to see a discussion here or something like that.

A-hey!???

This is coming from the same conversation i mentioned above, and i thought i'd pass this on as well. There are three recent responses here. Can you spot mine?

Someone said:
Re: I'm curious... 'Tis to laugh.
Wed, March 1, 2006 - 9:06 PM

in response to: I'm curious... 'Tis to laugh.

Sometimes one has good ideas they wish to share. There are those who recognize the value in this and pay attention. Others want to know what the idea is worth and ask how much does it cost. For them there must be a price tag in order to appreciate the value in an idea. If freely given it would perish trying to compete with the ideas they have purchased. Great Rituals abound to be discovered and created. In the market of the wilderness we pay respect. There are those who have forgotten this economy.


someone else said, replying to }} :

}} WHAT WORKS????
Thats the key. We all pay to play in one way or another-Don Juan states this often in many different ways. give and take-its one of the natures of the universe, cause and effect.

If individuals are willing to pay for a thing it is their choice
does it work? they keep on
if it does not...move on.
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I say what "works" in the context of the enforced corrall of ideas which we are taught to think nothing of completely encompassing/surrounding us. That argument is like the argument for war. War also "works". The question is, now deeply? How deep is the meaning in something that appears to work on the surface (nice people all thanking you profusely and bidding you to "take care" and that's it; and 'keep me on your mailing list' and 'until next year' and 'so purifying'.) Yet the mentality of the colonized human being is not deeply or truly challenged.

Not like a true vision quest where no emergency backups are there to make sure no one is sued. Not like the scalding sweat that native prisoners or other traditional depth-questers experience. Colonized folks as a kind of "child" who are given a superficial experience (compared to the native prisoners, say in the film "Fire in the Hole"), and move on to seek something "more."

Within the frame of mind of money and all that comes with playing in this way, this game, "more" is sequestered due to "the limits of the system" and no true solidarity with human beings. It's like the therapy game. The institutional framework exists as more important so you don't "get sued" by someone who has not been able to escape that mentality. Someone who remains alienated-enough to fall back on the methods they have been conditioned to utilize *against* others who are no longer their true relations, but have become separated.

i think it makes sense to do a self-searching on these issues in order to avoid the pit-falls and mistakes that any watered-down interaction perpetuates.

Of course the biggest problem, if i haven't said it already, is the *internalized value* thing. We have been programmed/conditioned to not think things through; we don't even generally have the ability to *step outside* the paradigm that is so deeply around us that we believe it is *all that is*. And then scoff at the "alleged" magick of ancient ways. As if a summer of your programs could fill in for thousands of years of ancient traditional ways.

Or something along those lines, anyway. i don't think i can adequately articulate with the english language...

i guess the thing that brought this kinda thang home for me most was during a native-led sweat i did where the native guy was drinking a pepsi beforehand and i just was judging his mule all over the place once i saw that. So in the sweat i let away my social armors (as i usually do anyway) and whooped and coyote-called to my heart's content. Well, that pepsi-drinkin' native let out a WHOOP that totally knocked me off my "pedestal" of sorts. That WHOOP was coming from a place much much much deeper in HEART, even if gotten from experiences of differing depths than mine.

Anyway, for now, i'll just end with the following quote i found recently:

"Unless we are very very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves. This indifference can be in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon. We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them... The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that allows mutual discovery." --Anne Truitt


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and said more:
Re: more thinking on the selling of ceremonies

What about those who cannot afford to pay with such money? And how they may get swept to the side when one with greenbacks competes for a place with y'all? Are safeguards put into place to avoid this kind of situation? People i sometimes hang with use the "no one turned away for lack of money"-type way. What do you think?

For myself, i've got to add that i avoided the Men's Movement simply because of the huge (for me) fees they were charging to participate. So i missed that entire network potential because of these "exorbitant" fees---expensive for me, yet "nothing" for the average exec. What is going on in this situation when such is allowed to happen and no one appears to think about this? (i assume that many natives believe that speaking to 'middle management' and 'upper management' types is "more constructive" than trying to bridge with the "low end" of the economically "challenged" (i for one am a 'drop out' from the entire cult ure).

What about the value system that is not questioned when *the only way* we think of for payment is via dollars? Those who see the problems of 'capitalism' say that to escape the monetary system (and imagination) is to escape a major hurdle (if not "the" major hurdle) that oppression has created. Why do you/others think that they are so strong about this?

How about that one must play within "the rules" in order to first "make money" and second, to fill out all the "necessary" forms?

}} What is wrong also with someone valuing what they pay for? They've (in general) worked for the green paper-why not value it?
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Some have said that paying in money is not as valued as, say, paying with physical labor, or paying with very special objects one has found in their life adventures. I mean, for instance, the average "normal" comparitively "rich" person can come and pay for your ceremony and such is nothing to them. Does it turn, then, into another spectacle to merely consume *when* participants do not truly escape from the imagination that dominates them?

i'm not seeking to promote a hierarchy of morality here, just that we think through the ways we take on. Are we thinking these things through adequately in relation to the imaginations we're sharing and their long history of being forcefully dominated by these value systems we think nothing of replicating today? So i wonder about this in this context.

Thank you for going this far with this, anyway. i see you are at least wearing the ideas and immersing yourselves!

}} The fact is that individuals expend enrgy and it transforms into green paper, work is work-anything that comes from the work a person has done should be valued...shouldn't it? that seems like a void of self respect to me.
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curious way to re-arrange the idea of respect....i'll pass this concept on to others who'd like to think about this more...and see what i can bring back to you.

[[[pssst, please respond with YOUR thoughts!]]]

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my path has included quite a few long-distance solo bicycle trips, a 26+ mile solo run, daring to go into my fears, and other adventures in living (solo and with/amongst other human beings and etc).

I know this is an old post but I wanted to respond in case it gets to you.

This piece is very well written. I am in awe of your grasp of the issues and the way you put them together. Thanks

RC