Reflections on the Complex History and Ethical Questions Surrounding Being White and Practicing Shamanism

Over the years, I have conversations with some Native Americans and their allies who assert that I am misappropriating or misrepresenting Native American cultural practices and spirituality. That I am part of the ongoing problem of colonization and destruction of their cultures. For the hundreds of thousands of non-Natives around the world who are practicing what I call "western shamanism", I hope this will bring some clarity about both the history behind this spiritual and therapeutic movement that has been influenced by many indigenous teachers and their students. For my naysayers, I hope it will open doors to a different view that recognizes the paradoxes created by centuries of violence, theft, colonization, and other abuses perpetrated by Europeans and their descendants on indigenous peoples and their cultures.

After 30 years of study with Native teachers, of deep friendships with Native individuals over many years, and years of research on this question, I must respectfully disagree with such assessments of who I am and what my spiritual practice and worldview is. I am not saying that there is not truth in these criticisms when looking back at the long history of Native-White engagement. Of course, there have been terrible abuses, misappropriation and misrepresentation. But I believe it is a mistake to label every individual such as myself under this blanket. I hope you will bear with me and read further.

I speak only for myself; I cannot speak for every non-Native person who professes to practice “shamanism” or to be a “shaman” or to be offering teachings and practices that they say are “Native American” or influenced by them. I certainly do not speak on behalf of any Native teacher or individual. My understandings are formed out of my own deep self-inquiry and study of history around these issues. They are influenced by my Native teachers and the Native teachers of my white teachers whose goals have been to heal this huge ancestral wound that haunts all of us—the wound of violence, genocide, discrimination, and its outgrowths. I also do not say, nor have I ever said that Native American people, tribes or nations are all happy to offer their cultural and spiritual ways to non-Natives. Indeed, I know that the opposite is more common.

Before I say more, first, I offer my deepest regrets for the harm my ancestors did to the Native peoples of this land. My ancestors came from Europe as early as the late 1500s to Jamestown. This migration continued through the 18th century. As such, many were part of murder/genocide and colonization, whether with clear intent or just by virtue of escaping whatever travails they experienced in their home countries that led them to go on a perilous voyage to step onto and settle on Native lands. I am deeply grieved for this legacy of suffering, of genocide, colonization, and ongoing discrimination and oppression of Native peoples. For the destruction of their cultures and the theft of their lands. For the ways they continue to be abused, ignored, denigrated, stolen from, suppressed, outlawed, and misunderstood. Terribly and ironically, as a Euro-White woman, I have privileges and freedoms that many Native Americans do not have. This privilege has enabled me both financially and personally to be the recipient of the teachings offered by Native Americans.

Further, because of the oppression suffered by indigenous peoples, I understand how important it is for them to be very protective of their cultures and spirituality. To be skeptical of people like me. The ongoing contemporary challenges and transgenerational wounds are extremely serious. So much needs to be done to ensure the survival and sovereignty of their lands, languages, cultures, and spirituality.

Given my own ancestral history and the personal journey that led me to the spiritual way I live, I know I walk a razor’s edge. I do not take it lightly and have always sought to be as ethical as possible while honoring the call of my heart and soul that led me unexpectedly to Native teachers. Believe me, I fought it and questioned it. I held back. I struggled and searched for the why—why would I, a middle-class, Euro-White woman with Christian roots be so drawn to a spirituality rooted in small or large ways in practices and perspectives drawn from specific Native American lineages? To be clear, I am not a trained by Michael Harner or his students who say that "shamanism" and the practices they teach are common to all indigenous peoples. Nor, with a PhD, am I a doctrinaire academic; I do not say that there is “one” shamanism that can be traced to all indigenous and Native lineages worldwide. I do not say that journeying and other practices common to the western hybridized, therapeutic, and spiritual movement in the West called shamanism is practiced by all Native nations and tribes. I know that every Native/indigenous society and culture has their own unique spirituality, ways, and worldview. For as many different human languages there are, so are there often radical differences in culture, spirituality, and medicine. I say this repeatedly in every context where I can.

What I do speak truth to is that my path in this spiritual way is not superficial, nor it is colonization, although it is a result of colonization. There is a cross-fertilization that is common when different cultures come into contact, whether through violence or peace. While violence, coercion and theft have been a hallmark of the way Whites have treated Native Americans going back 500 years ago, there have also been friendships, marriages, and respectful collegial, educational, and business relationships and collaborations leading to fruitful results for both parties. This includes medicinal and healing practices, as well as spiritual views. Many White people through hundreds of years have been allies to and adopted by Native friends and tribes; they have also at times in the face of White attempts to wipe out the medicine people and spirituality of a tribe been tasked with helping hide and protect ancient wisdom. Sometimes this has been due to the fact that when there has been so much murder of or abandonment by Native peoples of their own ancestral ways due to economic necessity or because of forced assimilation and brainwashing, there is no one Native left to give it to.

What I mean to say here is that there is more than one story. Both the story of genocide and colonization is true, as is the story that I chronicle here. Many people like me represent a part of this complicated history that has run parallel to the terrible harm done to Native peoples by Europeans and their descendants. And yes, there are many among those in the society in which I live who steal and take without permission. There are also those who are superficial and shallow. But there are also those who are careful, ethical, and respectful.

Further, in the dynamic of cultural contact and exchange, there are often reasons that go deeper than individual self-interest or monetary pursuits driving the direction of our lives and the people who cross our paths. My Native teachers have been responsible in large part for dismantling the superficial education and conditioning that I underwent as a child in U.S. schools and society about Native history, cultures, spirituality, and science. As such, as part of the necessity of reciprocity, I have spent 2 decades educating my students in institutions of higher education and those who seek to study the spiritual path I follow about this complex and troubled history. I raise their consciousness and change their minds. Where they may come in believing that Native Americans are “superstitious”, practicing “sorcery,” “primitive” and other lies, they come out of my classes knowing without a doubt that these are fabrications and that there is as much, if not more complexity, wisdom, beauty and truth as what they have been taught is in Christianity, and what are erroneously called the “major 5 (or 6) religions” of the world (keeping in mind that more people on the planet are steeped in what are loosely and erroneously called “indigenous religions”).

I trust that my students will pass this knowledge and the lessons about respect and tolerance on to their children and that their children will pass it onto their grandchildren and on 7 generations into the future and beyond. This is the best way I can, as a Euro-White woman, contribute to the dismantling of 500 years of destruction and diminishment of Native peoples worldwide and to influence a future wherein every culture, every society, including and beyond Native American nations and peoples, will be respected and left at peace within their own natural and inalienable sovereignty—culturally, religiously, spiritually, geographically, and physically. Then, hopefully within that more ideal state, when cultural wisdom and knowledge, ways and views are shared and exchanged, it will not be under threat of or actual violence or done without respect, but rather will always arise out of mutual friendship, generosity, and love.

Could I have done decolonization of the minds of my students without my path being drawn through a variety of synchronicities and eventually interest into study with Native American teachers? I suppose I could have, but, honestly, the fact that I have had direct, personal relationships with indigenous teachers and friends has made what I teach my people more authentic. I am not speaking from reading books and scholarly tropes; I am speaking from personal experience. I have thus had to decolonize my own mind--to the extent that I am able, given how dense and lifelong the smog of racism is.

Next, I am well aware of the history, complexities and problems of the use of the word "shaman" and practice of "shamanism". Since meeting my first Native American teacher some 30 years ago, I have grappled in depth with the ethical and historical complexities of being a Euro-White woman steeped in a spiritual way that continues to be contested and criticized in many quarters (she herself does not use the word “shamanism”). These include Native Americans who believe that my spiritual worldview and way is misappropriation and continuing destruction of their cultures, Christians who believe that shamanism (and the spirituality of Native Americans) are a form of devil worship or influenced by demonic forces, and those steeped in western Academia and the mainstream westernized, scientific worldview who think it is superstitious, primitive, and irrelevant.

Against this backdrop, even as Native peoples have been imprisoned, terrorized, and oppressed, allies of Native Americans were and continue to be demonized and subject to misunderstanding, discrimination, and outright hatred by their own kind. Back not so long in the past, it could even lead to imprisonment and death. I am not trying to create an equivalency of harm, but simply point out that not all Whites agreed with, nor willingly participated in the bigoted, murderous policies and practices of their people. And at times, they stood up to the status quo or continued friendships with Native people at some risk to themselves and their families. Violence creates all kinds of double binds, difficult choices, and unusual partnerships. It thus also creates complexities.

I am very clear that every Native and indigenous culture has a spirituality that is deep, unique to each, and complex. That these ways are ever and always in service to the community, not a form of individual psychology or spiritual seeking, as it appears to be in westernized society--although I contest this some below. Further, I do not choose to speak in generalities such as "shamanic cultures", nor do I say I speak on behalf of any particular Native nation, tribe, group, or individual. Where I may use the word “shamanism” to describe a particular indigenous community, teacher, or culture, I do so when they themselves use the term, for some do for a variety of reasons.

I have attempted many times to shed the term in reference to what I do. But as I often say with much wryness, “it has stuck to my ass like Velcro” because in my milieu, it is understood to describe the earth-based and mystical path and healing work I do. So, I have had to accept the need to use the word for who I am and what I do with the caveat that it is a western, hybridized system that has been adapted from and influenced by spiritual worldviews and ways of my particular Native teachers, as well as western psychology. That it is an earth-based, cosmological, mystical spiritual way and, as such, has qualities and elements that can be found all around the world back through time. I make clear that am not Native American, do not have Native American in my bloodlines, and do not seek to become a Native American, if that were even possible.

Yet, my specific Native teachers have generously gifted me and others like me with an infinitesimal amount of spiritual wisdom and practices from their ancestral and cultural lineages that is relevant to the needs of these times, particularly in places such as the society in which I was raised, where profound healing needs to take place. In some cases, their efforts have been blessed by elders in their community or have been prophesied by them. The reasons these particular individuals have done this are due to an understanding that we live now in times of great need in which their cultural knowledge--about how to live life in an ethical way, how to heal personal and ancestral wounds (both in individuals and in communities), and how to come into and bring peace, harmony and balance into our families, communities, and the world at large--is pressingly needed, not just for single individuals, but for our hurting world. In some cases, they admit that under the guidance of their teachers and ancestors, they have adapted the practices of their community to meet 20th and 21st century needs and realities. They also continue to bundle certain cultural practices out of sight of non-Native people. And, in fact, healing people the likes of me--in westernized society--is essential to ending the madness for all of us because we hold the power (for the time being). My people--of Euro-White descent and those who have become completely westernized--must change if the world is to become more inclusive, tolerant, less violent, and more respectful of difference. Our transformation is part of the solution, not outside it.

Now to the question often asked of me and others like me: why did I not turn to the pre-Christian ancestral legacy of my European ancestors? My people hied from Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, and France. Surely going back hundreds of years, they were steeped in an earth-based, mystical cosmology. I respond to the question in this way: I was never drawn to these traditions. Why, I cannot say. I tried. I traveled in Ireland where they have been better preserved despite the outright destruction of these cultural practices by the English and many before them. They just never stuck. I find myself wondering if a few of my ancestors who came to America so many centuries ago had friendships or were in some part influenced by the Native Americans in their midst and that I, through little bits of DNA and ancestral memory carry this legacy. I will never know. And sometimes I think it has something to do with how the land holds memory and the spirits of the land call to those who are open and receptive—who listen. There are mysteries beyond what we can grasp with our minds. I can only speak to the fact that my heart was called in a certain direction and that events unfolded to pull me in ever more deeply into Native American and shamanic ways.

As for the question of initiation into the work of the healer and mediator with spirits, ancestors, and the powers and forces of nature, among other roles played by medicine people in some places: I have not undergone rituals that seek to put an individual under extreme physical, mental, and emotional stress to facilitate a shift in consciousness or as a test in preparation for sacred work. But I did get extremely sick at the age of 45—an event that precipitated a visionary experience in which a spirit came to me and said, “You must do what you know you are meant to do. You must step up. If you don’t, you will get sicker and die younger. If you wait any longer, it will get even harder to make the change.” I knew exactly what was meant by this and had crystal clarity that I had to follow this guidance, no matter what hardships it brought. So, I left my tenured academic career with a full-time salary and went to be trained in shamanic healing methods by Alberto Villoldo, a student of the Q’ero medicine people of the Andes in Peru, among others. Why him? Because I was at the time pursuing my own healing from family trauma with a woman who had been his student and was on the faculty of his school. She advised me to go meet and work with Alberto. “He will help you.” So I was initiated into his adapted version of the mesa tradition. It took me a year and a half to regain my health and mental balance.I left my full-time, well-paid tenured position at the University of Virginia to pursue this spiritual calling and to recover. I know for a fact that following the guidance of that spirit and the advice of that healer saved my life and my mental health.

As I have reflected on the years studying with Alberto, I found myself noticing generational changes and differences in the contact between white students and their Native American teachers, and thus in the practice of western shamanism. Going back to the early and mid-20th century, when the first wave of mostly white men had meaningful personal and spiritual encounters with Native American teachers and medicine people, they came with their ignorance, prejudices, conditioning, and biases. Some misrepresented, misappropriated, and even stole. In academic realms, going back to the late 19th century, scholars made generalizations and assumptions without any or very little contact with Native peoples. They presumed to speak about things about which they knew nothing except from reading scholarly tropes, including Mircea Eliade, the man who borrowed a word from a Tungus-speaking people in Siberia, "sharman" and coined the term "shaman" and then proceeded to make wild generalizations about such people.

As a result of the books they wrote, many white people flocked to Native lands, property, homes, and reservations naively thinking that they, too, could have such experiences and be welcomed with open arms. They often gave idiotic "gifts" of shells and other meaningless flotsam and jetsam. It was an invasion of another kind. I see their ignorance, insensitivity, stupidity, and entitlement as a result of a soul sickness rampant in the world and among Whites. There is a spiritual emptiness, a vacuum that has been passed down for hundreds--perhaps thousands of years. When someone wakes up to the pain of this lack, they will do extremely stupid, thoughtless things. In the case of White people, due to generations of disinformation, conditioning, unhealed trauma from violence both perpetrated and received, among other reasons, they have acted out of conscious and unconscious prejudices. As M.D. Judith Lewis Herman put it in her seminal book, Trauma and Recovery, perpetrators and also part of the dialectic of trauma. How I put it is that they carry wounds that create and perpetuate trauma in succedent generations. This is how perpetration, from subtle to overt, continues.

This is a legacy I have sought to dismantle one individual at a time both in my academic work and as a healer and spiritual teacher and mentor.

Working at a major university and now as part of the faculty of Atlantic University, I have developed and taught courses on race, violence, peacemaking, and western shamanism. In particular, as an anti-racism educator in the U.S. grappling with the legacy of the Black-White issue here and dealing with many white people who have the same problem in that arena, I know the negative consequences of the brainwashing and whitewashing of history and culture leading to ignorance, the plague of bias, and the presumed entitlement and superiority that lurks, whether overtly or unconsciously in us. We also sometimes accidentally or intentionally do things that are disrespectful, that are directly aggressive or enact unconscious and conscious microaggressions. We carry bias and prejudice in our DNA. I include myself in here; I have stepped in it more times than I can count, both with Blacks and Native Americans. You can only know what you know; the only way you can learn is to make mistakes, be shown the error and harm in your ways, and then seek earnestly to become more aware and change if you choose to. I continue to work on myself and to support my students in doing the same.

Yet, since Eliade, Harner and Villoldo and others like them who wrote books and became famous using the word “shamanism”, there have been so many forces and so much more opportunity for Whites and others schooled in western education and by Christianity to learn better. By and large, the people I meet whom I consider, like myself, to be second generation students of Native Americans, are more aware, humble, careful, self-confrontational. There is greater caution about what we do and what we say. The rising third generation—people who are much younger than I am—are even more so. Humanity is changing. The revelation of the Nazi Holocaust, the work of Gandhi in challenging British colonization, the Civil Rights Movement, the work of Nelson Mandela in dismantling South African apartheid, Native Americans standing up for their sovereignty, and resulting changes in western education about our shared and troubled history have had a profound impact. Our consciousness is being raised. We are becoming more aware and more respectful. The harsh histories are out in the open, despite the ways that some in the U.S., particular, are trying to once again suppress it. They will not succeed because it is like trying to put the genie back into the pot. You cannot erase knowledge from the mind.

So over now almost 100 years, the landscape of the exchange and proffering of spiritual wisdom and ways going from Native American teachers to their students and from white students of Native Americans who then become the teachers of their own people is changing. I, as is true of my clients and students, know the harsh and terrible history and seek to be ethical in speech and to give back in service in some ways to heal these harms. We have come to understand the ancestral, transgenerational legacies that must be transmuted for the cycle to end for all of us. We are trying to walk that razor's edge while answering the call of our hearts and souls.

Furthermore, western shamanism is not going away. Indeed, the numbers of people worldwide who want to study and practice this spiritual and therapeutic way are growing, as are the numbers seeking help from people like me. I continue to be impressed by the great diversity of people who take advantage of my services. They are of every nation, ethnicity, and race, including some Native Americans. They work in the halls of corporations, government, and medicine. They work in service industries and in religious settings. They are psychologists, social workers, ministers, and rabbis. They are people staying at home and raising children in rural, suburban and urban settings. They are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, New Age, agnostics, and atheists. Or just "spiritual." Or they are, as they would put it, "nothing," but committed to being compassionate and kind. They are old and young hippies. But truthfully, the majority are folks who live a mainstream style of life.

What they all share is a pressing need to heal something in themselves that other methods perhaps have not touched, including western medicine, psychiatry, and psychology. Or they want to add shamanic energy medicine in with the work they are doing with a therapist. Some have heard of shamanic healing and deliberately seek it out; others simply see the world “healer” or “energy healing” in my bio and come. Others have been raised in families open to alternative spirituality and medicine; most have not. But a lot of them--more than the others--come because they have heard of "shamanic healing" or "shamanism" and that is what they seek. So, I have ultimately surrendered to this fact and keep the terms in the language I use while doing my best to add caveats and to hold my students accountable to understanding the history and being sensitive and careful.

As I do this sacred service, I am deeply grateful and humbled to be a student of my Native teachers and their non-Native students, one among millions around the world. In the end, as I have surrendered to the path to which my soul and Spirit (by whatever name) have called me, I have had to sit in the fire of these contradictions and complexities. I also have had to accept the fact that I will be criticized and misunderstood by some.

All this being said, I can only assure naysayers that I only practice and teach where and what I have been authorized to do by Native teachers. I always ask permission; I do not presume. I also do my best to serve my people, my community--whom I consider to be anyone who has been raised in and conditioned by the western, materialistic paradigm. I understand from 15 years as a healer that individual healing and spiritual seeking, when done with humility and right intention, ultimately contributes to the healing of families, communities, nations, humanity, and Mother Earth. We are all interconnected and, thus, these wounds are in all of us. Where there is a sickness in body, mind, or soul, so it manifests in disease in the wider circle of relationships. So while I do not live in a tight-knit community where I would be serving their specific needs, I am, in effect, having an impact on many communities directly or indirectly.

And in my culture, if I am to do the best work and service of which I am capable and which my Native teachers and my soul have tasked me, yes, I must ask for remuneration. This is not work I can do on the side while maintaining a conventional and demanding career, as I used to, any more than can someone who is a minister, rabbi, or psychotherapist serving hundreds of people. I do not live in a self-sustaining Native or other culture. Supporting clients can sometimes be hard and time-consuming work as I hold their stories and pain as the pathway to open the channels of healing for and within them. To do it well, I must do it full time and ask for payment to support myself.

I live, as most of us on the planet do, in a world where money is the value of exchange and is needed to put food on the table, a roof over our heads, and a means to support other important needs for life. I also hold down other forms of income production outside of my shamanic work. I have not been getting rich and, in fact, have had mighty financial challenges since stepping up to do this in 2007. And I also at times provide my healing services pro bono for those in need and unable to pay, as well as provide free teachings such as these on YouTube. In this way, I seek to be in balance.

Should others wish to judge me harshly, whether Native or non-Native, so be it. It makes me sad that they have not taken the time to know me, nor to speak to me so they can base their opinions on direct, personal contact. I am not a stereotype any more than any human being is. To the degree that I am Euro-White and that my ancestors came to this land and thus participated wittingly or unwittingly in so much harm, I am part of the unfolding and complex web of this history. I hold myself accountable by trying to be as ethical as possible with the knowledge and wisdom gifted to me by Native American teachers. By healing the wounds of war, genocide, and violence in my clients and students—for all our ancestors have been touched by this scourge, whether as victims, perpetrators, bystanders, or all of the above—I seek to be part of the solution, not the problem.

And as a dear friend, a wise elder said to me upon reading this blog (so I add it here): "Your color has nothing to do with shamanism. Only your willingness to see and feel beyond the pale and know what cannot be known....You are right where you need to be: to help others." I would add that the spirits don't differentiate between races, cultures, societies. Inasmuch as we are human, there will always be people who are called and/or who will be born with these gifts and know they must use them or lose them--and maybe even their lives.

Someone may be born with a gift of music; I came into this world with what can be loosely called "spiritual gifts" (my mother used to call me her "spiritually gifted child).

And I know that despite these words offered here, there are some who will disagree. Yet I can only be myself and can only be in integrity with myself by doing what I do and being who I am. I cannot make everyone happy. In that spirit, I hope we can agree to disagree respectfully. And maybe to continue to engage in conversation that will be healing for all.

I seek ever and always to walk my talk. I seek to use my words in ways that inspire, teach, and heal all of us. I apologize if I am still missing something, because I am sure I am.

Now I offer these last words: May our families, communities, nations, peoples, humanity, Mother Earth and all our relations be healed and whole. May all live in prosperity and peace. May all have joy and happiness. May it be so. Aho.