Did some deep digging and the internet provided quite a lot of information about Shore Charnoe.
Shore Charnoe and her partner have been active in the 8 Shields/Art of Mentoring Community for years, and are treated like Elders. She presents herself as a self proclaimed "Medicine Person" and an Indigenous woman. She works as a public speaker, and holds workshops on "Indigenous teachings". She promotes herself as Métis, but no community claims her, nor does she directly address her specific heritage. Her father started a commune in California and had hundreds of followers and his background is quite infamous (below) but her mother's is unknown.
Through her organization, The Circle for Change, she runs workshops that offer teachings such as, "The Principles of Indigenous Medicine", "Journey of a Medicine Person", "Understanding Physical and Spiritual Health from an Indigenous Perspective". But no where does it give a specific tradition, just a sort of pan-Indigenous generality. She asks for payment by donation but then writes, that if you spend $20 on dinner, or $90 dollars on a one hour appointment with a health practitioner, how much would her weekend workshop be worth? SO she insinuates hundreds of dollars.
It seems like pretty much all of her work is with and for non-Indigenous people, and selling them these "Indigenous" teachings.
She also was a part of the Indigenous Peoples' United Nations, whose website is now defunct, but the IPUN and it's members' legitimacy has been questioned in this forum.
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Shore is the daughter of American Donald Hamrick (1935- 2011), a famous founder/leader of the Harbinger Commune (a California commune from the 60's that promoted communal living, public sex and nudity, use of psychedelics, and had 150 followers, now know as Harbin Hot Springs, a new age centre). He had 6 children, and moved up to Canada and changed his name to Zeera Charnoe. There is a lot of information on Hamrick (aka Charnoe) and Harbinger available on the internet, including links at the bottom of this page. There's also some strange accusations of him working for the CIA.
In a message on Charnoe's facebook page from Zee Charnoe, it reads:
- "July, in Aberdeen, Scotland, you entered my life. Thank you for coming. Now, a new home, in the same city, where
we live. Thank you for coming. Have a wonderful birthday sweetheart. Love Dad"
https://www.thecircleforchange.com/Her bio on the website from the organization that she started and now runs workshops though reads like this...
"Program founder Shore Charnoe is a Métis woman who received her Bachelor of Social Work degree from Ryerson University in Partnership with First Nations Technical Institute in Canada in 2017 after more than 20 years of serving as a foster parent, adoptive parent, family and children’s mentor, volunteer for children’s aid societies, and consultant for child welfare organizations.
Shore also holds an interdisciplinary Honors Bachelors degree from the University of Guelph, with an emphasis in philosophy of education, developmental psychology, and environmental science.
Shore founded The Circle for Change in Brantford, Ontario in 2013.
Shore is a high-functioning autistic woman who has personally overcome many physical limitations, enabling her to have a special connection with the children and parents she serves. She is a mother to 11 adopted and biological children and a grandmother to four, and has been a foster parent or mentor to more than 80 children and youth. A number of her adoptive children have fetal alcohol syndrome and come from abusive homes where they were victims of severe abuse, neglect, and trauma."
https://www.youtube.com/wach?v=m0VsRqVUP4YIn the above video Shore shares drum songs from different cultures, speaks about fostering Indigenous children, and makes references to all sorts of different Indigenous cultures and teachings, meanwhile never directly introducing or addressing her own heritage or community.
- Says "One of the places that I have a lot of teachers in is the Anishinaabe tradition", and then starts talking about
Anishinaabe as"we" though she is not Anishinaabe.
- Also "Just so you know, I'm a little bit of a trickster, I've had a lot of coyote teachings over the years, and so we
teach invisibly"... but then have to explain that you're teaching invisibly??
- I did home schooling, out on the land - , but maybe that was
just the Harbinger Commune or elsewhere?
https://www.brantnews.com/news-story/5803099-imitation-indeed-sincere-flattery-for-camp-unity/__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Information on Donald Hamrick aka Zeera (Zee) Charnoehttp://donaldjameshamrick.yolasite.com/personal-life.phphttp://donaldjameshamrick.yolasite.com/resources/Harbinger%20Community,%20for%20Wikibin,%20May20-11.pdfhttps://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/ky833dv5228https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=79719022_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Some of her siblings are: Sky Charnoe, Bryce Card, Lois Cordova, Jill Marie Hamrick (deceased).
She also has a cousin named J Paul Hawthorne who's a genealogist in California who may have more info.
