WARNING: This is a personal post.

Daniel practicing the curandero art. Photo by http://www.elainag.com/.

The path of the curandero can be, without a doubt, the least gratifying vocation one could ever choose.  Truly, the only reason one chooses to do it is if they have a "calling." More often than not, it is a thankless gig where heart and soul is poured into a life serving others with very little returned in favor. Additionally, like any vocation there are hits and misses. Not everything is perfect.


I use Sharon's definition because that is primarily the lineage that I practice, as there are many different lineages of curanderismo throughout the Latin Americas depending on the country (or part of each country) you are referring to. Beyond that, there are a lot of misconceptions with this practice, especially as a Caucasian American practicing this work in a modern world filled to the brim with New Age self-help gurus on every street corner offering enlightenment at a specially priced package.

Let's run down the list of misunderstandings about what I do (or don't do):

1. I am not a shaman. Shamans are indigenous healers/priests that live completely immersed in a lifestyle of which I could only hope to aspire to. They truly walk between the worlds of the seen and Unseen (and I don't mean someone who can just snap right out of a 30 meditation and then drive on over to Whole Foods to get a smoothie). Some of the practices inherent in curanderismo are shamanic, per se (in the same way that some of the practices are also Christian or Buddhist) but that does not make me a shaman (in the same way that I am not a Christian or a Buddhist). I do try to live my life by a code of conduct as a priest would, as that is how I was trained and initiated.
2. I am not a doctor, therapist, or a life coach. Nor do I want to be. I provide this warning every single time I have a client that I choose to work with. I am not certified in psychology, psychiatry, or social work, though I may be knowledgeable in them all. If you want your life problems solved what I offer is a chance to cut into the Truth underlining your soul and pave a path for transforming your current circumstances to rise up to a higher potential. It is always up to you, the client, to make those choices. You are completely responsible for yourself. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to make money off of you.
3. I am a father and husband, first and foremost. I have a life. Although this is a vocation, it is not my primary source of livelihood. I have two full-time jobs already: the first is my day job to support my family, and then the second is my family itself. I will always do my best to help someone in need, but my life comes first. Sometimes I just may not be able to find the time. And that's okay, because (refer to number 2).
4. Yes, I charge for my time. I am not claiming to be a Lakota medicine man or a spiritual guru. I am trained within a specific lineage based upon folk healing practices. In this tradition, which stems from northern Peru, this is the primary vocation of those claiming to be curanderos and curanderas. This is how they pay their bills, it is part of their culture, and it has been so for thousands of years. Some of them even advertise. So, before getting triggered about someone "capitalizing off of indigenous spirituality" do some research first on the history of curanderismo, as well as take into consideration that for the 9 to 10 hours I work at my day job, then the raising of three children, as well as being a husband (and maybe even having some time to myself....maybe?) that my time does need to be compensated in some way shape or form. I don't gut my clients. I do not aim to make a living off of them. I certainly don't swindle. I try to be flexible or sometimes even accept trade if someone is in dire need. I'm here to serve to the best of my ability. But, the teachings of my tradition beg sacred reciprocity in all of life. That means giving must always happen before receiving.
5. You have to be ready to do some work. My job is to reveal that which you are unable to currently see. After that, I provide you with some breathing room as well as tools to be able to get the desired result you would like to have. After that, you have to get to work, because any true healing comes from you doing the majority of the work. I've always been taught that curing is likened to sitting in the passenger seat of the car . . . the client is driving, I'm just there holding the map. I can point the way, but you have to get there. If I did everything for you, you wouldn't heal. You would become dependent upon me, then hyper-dependent, and finally you would become worse off. You have to be willing to change things, change behaviors, change habits, as well as change addictions. Healing is transformation and transformation means turning one thing into another, lead into gold. It is not an easy-going process. It takes work.
6. Warning! Shadows abound! If you are looking for healing it's because something isn't working right in your life, with you. 9 times out of 10, something is not working right because you are not seeing something clearly and have developed habits that prevent you from seeing it. My job is to see it, then to get you to see it, so you can then do something about it. This often leads to very uncomfortable revelations that can turn your world upside down. If you are not ready for that, and especially not ready to do anything about it, then you may want to reconsider this modality and seek elsewhere. Most especially, if you get started and do not stick with it to address the unforeseen revelation, you may open a whole new Pandora's box for yourself that could potentially unravel more chaos into your life. Be ready to face anything, most especially your own self. 
7. I am not enlightened, or more spiritually special than you are. Curanderismo takes training, skill, and an artistic knack. To be a curandero doesn't mean God chooses me especially to be more spiritually better than anyone else. It's a craft. Some people just have a knack for being a doctor, a lawyer, a painter, or a project manager. Some people are good at those things, are meant to do them somehow. It doesn't mean they are spiritually enlightened or better than anyone else. In the same light, not everyone is meant to be a curandero; everyone has their own knack, their own purpose. Because I was trained as a curandero doesn't mean I am enlightened or a spiritual guru. Moreso, it doesn't mean I always have my shit together, either. I am a human being. I'm not perfect. But, I do have a knack for this particular craft and am definitely called to share it with the world. Do not hold me to a higher standard than you would hold yourself.  

These are just some of the misconceptions that float around about those who practice shamanic healing, or any other form of alternative healing modality. I cannot speak to other traditions, but I certainly can speak for my lineage.  Somehow, for some reason, I see many people in this tradition get a lot of flak, a lot of projection thrown at them for things out of their control. We are all human, and we need to treat each other such, at the same time holding each other up to an equitable standard of integrity and respect. 

I'm here to serve. There's no question about that. But, I'm also here to be vulnerable and make mistakes as well. It's a human experience and we're all here to paint the picture we were meant to paint.

Daniel and his beloved Autumn with their mesas. Photo by http://www.elainag.com/.

My previous post Apropos of Appropriation, also published on The Tattooed Buddha as Nobody Own the Word Shaman: Notes From A Middle Class White Man, has now been re-published in the UK Mag Sacred Hoop as "Cultural Appropriation and the 'S' Word." Below are some screenshot samples of the article, but if you would like to read the full thing please go to http://www.sacredhoop.org/ and purchase the full issue, or even buy a subscription! It's a great publication!




Pages 30 and 31 on http://www.sacredhoop.org/. 


A big thank you to Nicholas Breeze Wood for editorial help!

Photo by Elaina G Photography www.elainag.com

Yep. I probably shouldn't, but I'm going to do it. I am going to talk about cultural appropriation. And, more specifically, I'm going to address this word "shaman," and its use.

First of all, I'm a white man.

I really can't help that. Believe me, I've tried.

I'm very aware I come from a long lineage of colonial assholes who have run entire civilizations in the ground, massacred innocents by the millions and millions, as well as continually disenfranchise the less fortunate even to this day. 

Worse yet, I'm a middle class white man from a middle class background. Also, I'm the middle child in my family. I grew up and currently live in the Midwest, as well. Everything about my profile suggests I am destined to be stuck in the middle, between the two extremes of society.  

Therefore, I have never had to deal with racial profiling, disenfranchisement, or being labelled with a stereotype. I make it sound like a problem (and I will get into that) but really it's a privilege, one that I do not take advantage of, however I appreciate. I teach my kids that appreciation everyday. I teach them how they will never know what it's like to be pulled over by a police officer because of the color of their skin, and to understand the injustice of that. I teach them it is their responsibility to use that privilege to help those less fortunate. We need to help solve that problem, I tell them, not be a part of it. 

But, my lot in life is a problem for me because of this: I am a very spiritual man, so where can I go find a relationship with God (or whatever you want to call the Big Cheese) that means something to me? I'm pretty much American. My family on both sides don't really have much connection with their ancestry so I have nothing to tie me back to whatever homeland my great-great-great grandfathers came from. At the same time, I was raised your average Protestant Christian, but I have always felt something empty within that system of organized religion. 

And unfortunately (as a colleague of mine likes to remind me from time to time) I read Chomksy way too early for my own good so I now I have gone down that rabbit hole of awareness and understand I am a citizen of the colonial problem living comfortably on top of a graveyard of genocide that is called the Americas. I don't want to be a part of the white, colonial system. I don't want to be a part of the problem. So, where can I go? What can I do? Just as some of my black friends are stuck with always being identified as "black," so I am stuck being identified as the generic standard, the colonial output of mediocrity.

I have always been drawn to indigenous ways of life, because for every culture on the planet those ways are the trace root of our first leanings into having a relationship with the world as something sacred. When one feels lost, the natural human instinct is to go back to the source. 

Photo by Elaina G Photography www.elainag.com

I used to flit from thing to thing, being a seeker and trying to find something with which to identify. After many years of wanderlust, I finally found my heart's content and have settled into two communities, which are distinct in and of themselves, but overlap consistently: the Heartland Ayllu and the KC Pipe Circle. Here is a breakdown of the two:

• The Heartland Ayllu (pronounced EYE-YOU) is a local spiritual community of mesa carriers, affiliates of a global shamanic lineage called the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition (PMT for short). The PMT was founded by don Oscar Miro-Quesada, a curandero (folk healer) from Peru who was tasked by his teachers to bring the work of the mesa (a shamanic altar) to the gringos in the North, in order that it may bridge some understanding between cultures and turn the tides of Western domination for the better. Oscar has always said that the PMT was founded and inspired by his life in Peru, but it most definitely a cross-cultural lineage.
• The KC Pipe Circle was inspired by Ojibwe medicine man Sun Bear, who was intent on opening up the sacred teachings of his people to the modern world, including the white man. The KC Pipe Circle meet monthly and share the chanupa, a sacred pipe given to the People via the Native American legend White Buffalo Calf Woman. Currently led by medicine man Lee Stumbling Deer, the KC Pipe Circle is a humble group centered on family values and open acceptance of one's own spiritual heritage. They meet once a year for a sacred dance which was founded on the goal of being a "giveaway," a prayer of thanksgiving for the world. 

These communities operate within the Kansas City metro and both (despite having a descendency from North and South American native cultures) have their own values, traditions, and belief systems. I am heavily involved in them both, and was initiated by don Oscar to be a Sanctioned Teacher in the PMT in 2012. Both groups are good people, trying to do right by the Earth and all of humankind.

Photo by Elaina G Photography www.elainag.com

So, here's the kicker. I (as well as my fellow community members) get a lot of flak for doing what we do. And, surprisingly enough, not from the conservative Christians in Kansas who (you would think) would be appalled at our fire-pits, tobacco smoke, and drumming. Just the other day, an on-line invitation I sent out for a meet-up I was coordinating got bombarded with criticism by a group of individuals that, for lack of a better reference point, might consider themselves "True Natives." The meetup was for a men's group that was open to all faiths, called Sun Lodge. It was named that because the sun in the PMT is a symbol for the masculine, and a "lodge" generally denotes a sacred gathering space:

   
Pretty harmless, right? Well, or so I thought, until certain individuals began inquiring about what we were doing on the Facebook invite. "What's a sun Lodge?" they asked. "And what Shaman will be there ,, it's says shamanic gathering ?" Excuse the typos, but it was internet speak. The initial critic invited his friends, and they began trolling the invite with comments:

"You had me running the other way at the word Shaman."

"Always tryin to exploit them ways. Its not enough they stripped ancestors homes. Tryn to steal them ways too."

"People try to steal indigenous ceremonies ,, use key trendy words, sounds amazing ...Spiritual Candy bars ,, sure taste good ... Read a couple ndn Books by Black Elk and become experts..."

Now, I know of the critic who started this conversation. He actually used to be highly involved in both of the communities mentioned above until he got connected with some "authentic" Natives and now sits atop the soapbox of faux legitimacy judging others for spiritual hucksterism. He now travels around the area teaching drum workshops claiming to be a "real" Native American (even though he's actually a small-town farmboy from Kansas).  People love his stuff, getting that "authentic" Native experience because of his darker skin and long, braided hair. And talks the medicine man talk really well too (ever see Smoke Signals?). 

After he invited a load of his friends to jump on the trolling bandwagon, I began to wonder, why such a fret over the word "shaman?" What was the big deal? "You had me running the other way . . ."  

There was a lot to digest in this interaction. They claimed not to be judging, but just trying to warn the world, even though they didn't know those of us facilitating the event or take a minute to listen to what we had to say. I was clearly being accused of cultural exploitation. They then continued to find websites of white people pretending to be shamans-for-hire, posting them on the invitation, and heckling. "Gud 1," they laughed. 

The conversation certainly triggered me, but instead of engaging into a full-fledged debate (like I normally do) I just deleted the invitation. Over time, though, it sat with me, curdling in my stomach like bad bourbon. What was truly the issue here? What was I exploiting? It was a free gathering, no money involved (except the thirty dollars I spent out of my own pocket for donuts), so it's not like I was taking anything away from anyone in the name of spiritual enlightenment. The gathering was truly just a group of men, coming together to pray, to talk, to share their hearts, and that was all.

So, why the controversy? And why are am I and others like me being followed by "authentics" who are accusing us of spiritual thievery?

First of all, let's look at the word "shaman." Such a scary word, that one . . . .

As noted above, I was accused of using that "trendy" word as a way of stealing indigenous practices, but is that really the case here? In the groups I am involved in (both of which helped sponsor the event) our practices were inherited by spiritual teachers of those particular traditions. I'm not claiming to be a medicine man, but as a sanctioned PMT teacher, I certainly have the right to hold a sacred space for humans to gather and pray within that particular tradition, and should be able to do so without fear of retaliation.  

So, the question is, how is "shaman" an indigenous word?

Short answer? It isn't. Well, it is, but it isn't. Some history: 

The word "shaman," comes from the Siberian group of tribal peoples, the Evenki (formally known as the Tungus), originally recorded as "šamán." It was a name found in the journals of a 15th Century Russian priest named Avvakum Petrov, describing a witch doctor figure of the Evenki people. According to scholars, it is possibly even a corruption of their southern dialect, stemming from the root of the Arabic word for devil: "shaitan." That word was later adopted by Dutch statesman Nicolaes Witsen, who brought the term to the West. Overtime it evolved into a generic term to denote a priest, medium, medicine man/woman, or witch doctor within any sort of tribal community the West came into contact with. As anthropology grew over the centuries, and became a more viable science of study due to colonial expansion, the word became a common trope within the field. As with all language (even indigenous) words evolve, their definitions change. Languages morph and meld into one another, what becomes one word for one people becomes another for another (i.e. - "condor" and "puma" are not English words, they are strictly from the runasimi language of the Quechua peoples from Peru). 

"Shaman," you see, is essentially a white man's word, a word the Western world was using to describe a specific type of holy man they were encountering in indigenous settings. In fact, its definition has become very precise, and is not attributed to any one tradition or religious institution at all. As in most of my writings, I commonly refer to my favorite interpretation of the definition of shamanism, from Dr. Roger Walsh, a professor of psychiatry and anthropology at the University of California:

"Shamanism can be defined as a family of traditions whose practitioners focus on voluntarily entering altered states of consciousness in which they experience themselves or their spirit(s) interacting with other entities, often by traveling to other realms, in order to serve their community." (The World of Shamanism: New Views of an Ancient Tradition, p. 15-16.)

Photo by Elaina G Photography www.elainag.com

A shaman does not necessarily even have to be tribal. You can be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Wiccan, or Buddhist, and be a shaman. It is a type of spiritual practice within a tradition that allows the hierarchy of priesthood to step aside, and facilitates direct interaction with world of spirit.  

Nobody owns the word "shaman," and it is a nebulous term at that, which has only found its definition through centuries of linguistic evolution. So, somehow claiming it to be a Native term that been stolen from North Native American spiritual traditions and used for exploitation for a free gathering could be what is known in circles of logic as reductio ad absurdum. 

Furthermore, calling something "shamanic" doesn't have to mean a "shaman" will be present. One does not beget the other. Shamanism is a school of thought, a spiritual practice. Does Plato need to be present in order to engage in a discussion of Platonic philosophy? Does a priest need to be present to host a Christian meet-up? 

A friend of mine (who I will call Billy) is a drum-maker who was taught a specific drum-making technique by the Hopi, of which only five people in the United States have knowledge of (well, six, since our critic-buddy above co-opted the method without permission). Billy made the drum you see in the picture above. Beautiful work! 

In any case, Billy and I have had this discussion many times, whether I, as a white man, should even use the word "shaman" or "shamanism" when describing my own religious practice. Billy could care less, but if it bothered me so much he suggested using the term "shamanist," which denotes being a student of the shamanic arts. It's a good term, and I use it sometimes, with a major emphasis on the "student of." We are all students of life. We are all learning how to be on the Earth. Some of us are more passionate about it than other white folk, and it seems to me it would benefit humanity by all of us embracing the idea of working together rather than trying to claim ownership over this practice or that one.

Being who I am, I still needed resolution, and sought out more opinion. I was fortunate enough recently to have a conversation with Thana Redhawk, poet, activist, and singer/songwriter, who is a Board member of the Native American Entertainment Coalition of California, as well as known for being the youngest Grandmother on the Grandmother's Circle the Earth Council. She caught my eye through her work with John Trudell, one of my heroes who was another poet and activist, though also a chairman of the American Indian Movement. Really, you couldn't get any more "Native" than John Trudell: he was the spokesperson for the takeover of Alcatraz in '69, for Christ's sake! So, I thought speaking with one of his colleagues, I could get some clarity on the issue.  

Generously, Ms. Redhawk lent me her ear, and listened to my woes over my colonial heritage, living on a land tainted by genocide and exploitation. "People are so quick to judge each other," she told me. "That was not the original tribes' way."

She spoke of her own experiences encountering those that take advantage of what they learn from traditional wisdom teachings:

"However, I do understand all that is occurring with what's being called the New Age movement, we should talk about what is culturally appropriate and what is not. The only thing you can do, when you are in a territory (and this goes for anyone) is to talk with the elders of that territory and the ancestors of that territory, by putting your tobacco down and asking them for permission to be there. Then, talk with the elders about what your heart is seeking. Because when someone comes to them in that way, then they know that Creator sent you, that you are not there to misappropriate anything. You're there because that is where your heart and spirit have guided you." 

She affirmed that I seemed to have been taught appropriately by own teachers, though there will always be those who are on guard about their traditions.

"Because where we stand in protecting our traditional ways," she continued, "Some are more open to it than others. My personal  point of view is that we all gather in one circle, because we are all one nationality, one race. The human race. And when we understand what inspires us, and where our hearts and spirits are, and create dialogue from that, that's where the healing begins."

I don't know about others. I don't know about New Agers who use unicorn energy to sell chakra crystals, because I'm not one of them. And I've criticized them many, many times. I know my communities. I know the Heartland Ayllu and the KC Pipe Circle. I know the local elders who humbly lead (they would grimace at the use of that term "lead") those communities. 

We honor the land, we honor the ancestors, and we honor all relations. If we throw around the term "shaman" every once in a while it needs to be remembered we know where it comes from, what that term means, and we don't use it lightly.

In essence, fellow critics, we put down our tobacco. Get to know us, and you just may agree.  

Photo by Elaina G Photography www.elainag.com