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7 Directions Movement Meditation, White Feather, Susun Weed, Wise Woman Univ

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Defend the Sacred:
Long article on Susun Weed's abuse of her "shamanic" apprentices and students:

April 7, 2022

The Herbalism Community Is at War With Itself Over Abuse Allegations

Famed herbalist and teacher Susun Weed says anger is part of her teaching method. Some of her former apprentices say it went too far.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vnxv/the-herbalism-community-is-at-war-with-itself-over-abuse-allegations

As mentioned elsewhere, I crossed paths with Weed in the mid-1980s. She was a hardcore appropriator, but to the best of my knowledge, she hadn't yet started in with the obvious psychosis and violent abuse of her students. Or, I hadn't seen or heard tell of it.

Then a friend went to her place a few years later, right around the time Weed started showing extreme, intense signs of paranoid schizophrenia - Susun screeching that everyone hated her, was out to get her, and then lashing out at people violently.  Weed was also giving some very awful, racist and harmful ceremonial advice. Weed is now claiming/blaming autism for her abusive and incoherent behavior. And Indigenous cultures. Obviously, none of this is even vaguely accurate - neither in terms of psychiatric diagnoses nor blaming Natives for her acting out. Her ideas of "Indigenous Cultures" are fraud books by Castaneda. She does a lot of blame-shifting and DARVO.

Some of her ridiculous claims from the Vice article:

--- Quote ---Weed says that her apprenticeships involve carefully-staged steps which are, she says, “consistent throughout the world in every Indigenous culture that I've been in, this is the way you become a shaman.”  (Weed is white. She says she has been an initiated witch since 1976, and claims to be an "initiated member" of the Seneca Nation’s Wolf Clan, initiated by an elder named Twylah Hurd Nitsch. Weed does not claim to be Native American or an enrolled member of any tribe. A press officer with the Seneca Nation wasn’t immediately familiar with Nitsch’s name or any formalized way that a non-Seneca person could be “initiated” into a clan. Weed says that Hurd Nitsch, whom she calls “Grandmother,” faced pushback from initiating non-Native people. “Further, Grandmother made me a “Peace Elder,” she told me. “As a Peace Elder, I was accepted at many Native gatherings and fully accepted as a member of the Wolf clan.”)

--- End quote ---

Her claims are b.s., of course. The "Native gatherings" were not. She means the "Medicine Wheel" fraud-fests run by Vincent LaDuke http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=2420.0 , events with Twylah Nitsch http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=1046.0 , and similar white, nuage events with pretendians and the occasional, token sellout/exploiter.

Even among her critics, none of these white herbalists have a word to say about the endemic appropriation going on, neither Weed's, nor their own. They only started to care when white people got hurt. And when it brought more scrutiny down on them.

Sparks:
Susun Weed is very active on social media, for those who want to see her "wisdom" in context:

https://www.facebook.com/susun.weed  [72 K followers. Ouch …]

https://twitter.com/susunweed  [4,259 Following — 10.1K Followers]

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