NAFPS Forum
General => Frauds => Topic started by: Gwaewael on June 17, 2012, 06:13:33 pm
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Hi,
I just found an 18-page “Alphabetical List of Nuage Tricksters” at http://nuagetricksters.bravehost.com/offenderstext.html. They listed Starhawk! She’s important! On that site they ask all their Native American Brothers and Sisters to boycott her as an unscrupulous fraud. I doubt they researched her. To the best of my knowledge, she only talks about pagan traditions from Europe and also a lot about politics, with an occasional reference to long-dead myths, like Sumerian or Greek. To the best of my knowledge, she never talks about Indian traditions. I suspect she was black-listed simply because she’s famous and white and her name is Starhawk. There may be a lack of information here. Her name is New Age, not Indian.
Many Indians want whites to return to their own traditions, and to the best of my knowledge, that’s what this woman is trying to do. She probably shouldn't be on this list of Nuage Tricksters.
I wonder if other people are being unfairly boycotted on this list. I couldn’t find any way to contact its authors. Are you able to contact these people and tell them to research Starhawk, and to do careful research in general before blacklisting people? I know Indians have many reasons to be angry at New Agers who misuse sacred Indian traditions. Now some Indians are perhaps doing harm by recklessly blacklisting people without cause.
Well, I’m hoping Starhawk is innocent and someone can contact the authors of this list. Please tell me if she is and if you can.
Many thanks,
Gwaewael ("Lake Wind" in an Elvish tongue, from "The Lord of the Rings". It's another New Age name.)
[ETA: Just changed thread title, nothing in your post-Al]
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I think it depends on your priorities.
If your priority is modern, eclectic rituals based in Wicca and Jungian ideas of "self-empowerment", and you like what Starhawk has to say about these things, you'll probably like her.
If you agree with her politics (she is a Jewish woman who travels to Palestine to work with Palestinians for peace, and she participates in environmental actions) you'll probably think she's doing good work.
However, if you prioritize Native sovereignty, and NDNs having the say about what ceremonies are performed on their lands, you may well have a problem with her. IIRC, the group who made up that list took issue with Star's behaviour at a rally on NDN land where she and some other people from her group made up a ceremony and led it as part of the action. From what I heard, the Native people there were not consulted about the made up ceremony.
And what does it mean to "boycott" someone? Authentic spiritual leaders serve their communities, in person. For a while Star was active on the Newage workshop circuit, but as far as I know, in recent years she has mostly focused on political activism for environmental and Palestinian causes. Last I heard, she also works with the collectively-run community on her home turf of the San Francisco Bay area. I don't know if she ever met with the NDNs who were offended by her actions, but I would want to hear from them about this.
Star is a Wiccan (trained by Z Budapest and Victor and Cora Anderson). Wicca was created in the 1940s. I don't think Star knew that when she wrote Spiral Dance, but she is definitely one of the people who has promoted the myth that Wicca is ancient. I don't know if she still does that. Some aspects of Wicca were ripped off from outsider fantasies of NDN ways, so I can well imagine that Wiccan or NeoWiccan rituals would look pretendian to NDNs. In some ways they are, even though not all Wiccans know that.
If you want a discussion of Starhawk, may I suggest you edit your post to change the title of this thread? If you want a general discussion of how people wind up on fraud lists, we can move this to etc, but I suggest you read up on the stuff that's already on the board about it.
ETA: Here are some recent discussions we've had about Appropriation among Wiccans and other Neopagans:
Morning Glory & Otter/Oberon Zell-Ravenheart and the Grey School of Wizardry: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=3668.0
Talking to Wiccans about Cultural Appropriation: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=3687.0
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The issue with Starhawk occurred at the G8 protest in Kananaskis of BC. The Elders considered the activities 'spiritual trespass'. Below is the only article I've been able to find for now. This was wrong. It smacked of white privilege and Starhawk should never have conducted ceremony there without consulting with local Elders before hand. The organizers of the protest, which included Starhawk, knew they were on the land of Traditional people because they had attempted to negotiate setting up their camp on reserve but got all pissy because the tribal council was not coming to a decision quickly enough for them.
"Native elders allege G8 protesters may have upset the spiritual balance of aboriginal lands when they burned leaves and sprinkled water on the main road leading to the G8 Summit.
The ritual -- by witches, wiccans and native protesters from British Columbia -- was conducted on Wednesday evening when a caravan of about 350 G8 protesters tried to drive to the G8 site. Halted at the first security checkpoint, the protesters burned some smelly leaves in the middle of the road.
"I told them what they are doing here is spiritual and cultural trespass," said Peter Wesley, a media spokesman for the Bearspaw Nation, one of three bands from the Stoney Nakoda Nation that regard the Kananaskis region as tribal lands of sacred significance. (National Post)
The 3,700-member Iyarhe Nakoda, or "people of the mountains," live on a 600-square-kilometre reserve on the edge of Kananaskis, which they call Ozade, the mountain area west of Calgary where G8 leaders ended two days of meetings yesterday.
Mr. Wesley said 12 Nakoda holy men conducted a spiritual ceremony at the G8 site on June 6 to sanctify the area for the purpose of keeping it safe for world leaders and to ensure the land remains environmentally pristine.
Now, the holy men may have to go back and have another ceremony to repurify the site and undo the influences of the protester's ritual, Mr. Wesley said.
"I told them [the protesters] we had already done this. They can't bring different religious things there because their idea of sanctifying the land might not be the same as ours."
Although some of the protesters were native, Mr. Wesley described the group as "New Age crystal people." He said he was not sure what kind of leaves or other material the protesters burned. "I suppose it was their own recipe."
Mr. Wesley said the G8 protesters apologized, saying they were unaware their ceremony may have contaminated the earlier Nakoda ritual.
Mr. Wesley said the Nakoda would never conduct their religious ceremonies in another location without permission. "We wouldn't go to Stonehenge to impose our beliefs on them and we wouldn't do our spiritual activity in New York City."
The Iyarhe Nakoda, named the Stoneys by early European settlers, rejected a plan by G8 protesters to set up a Solidarity Village on their land because they were concerned about the size of the village.
Yesterday, a handful of Nakoda demonstrated at the main road leading to the G8 site, saying they were upset that Jean ChrÈtien, the Prime Minister, was pushing African relief at the G8 meetings while they live in squalor.
"We have Third World families right across from where they are meeting. I don't even have running water," said Terry Daniels, whose Nakoda name translates as "Many Colours and Mother Earth."
"We have a lot of grief and pain," Ms. Daniels said. "Our children are killing themselves with suicide because they have no hope."
Ms. Daniels blamed conditions on the reserve on its three chiefs, whom she says do not equally distribute band funds to people outside their own families. She also said natives should be included in the G8 talks.
"It should be the G9. We're a nation, too. We were the first here."
Mr. Wesley disagreed, saying there are other forums for native people to express their grievances. He admitted conditions on the reserve may not be perfect, but argues that conditions in white communities are also less than ideal .
"There are many homeless people in Calgary. There are no homeless people here. Everyone has a roof over their head."
The Nakoda count 20 university graduates among their members and two have earned masters' degrees, he said.
Several years ago, alcohol related problems became so rampant on the reserve that John Reilly, a circuit court judge, refused to hear some cases involving Nakoda people until authorities addressed the cycle of abuse on the reserve, which he said was being run like a "banana republic" by its three chiefs. Judge Reilly successfully fought a move by his superiors to have him transferred to another jurisdiction."
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Hi,
I just found an 18-page “Alphabetical List of Nuage Tricksters” at http://nuagetricksters.bravehost.com/offenderstext.html. They listed Starhawk! She’s important! On that site they ask all their Native American Brothers and Sisters to boycott her as an unscrupulous fraud. I doubt they researched her...
I wonder if other people are being unfairly boycotted on this list. I couldn’t find any way to contact its authors. Are you able to contact these people and tell them to research Starhawk, and to do careful research in general before blacklisting people? I know Indians have many reasons to be angry at New Agers who misuse sacred Indian traditions. Now some Indians are perhaps doing harm by recklessly blacklisting people without cause.
Well, I’m hoping Starhawk is innocent and someone can contact the authors of this list. Please tell me if she is and if you can...
I really doubt they would put anyone on that list arbitrarily. All the lists I've seen are based on a series of complaints from Native people, not just one person's whim. There are maybe half a doezn of these types of lists on the net, and they are usually compiled by groups.
Just from a glance at the list, more than half of those names jump out at me as true because I recall we've researched them in here. I don't doubt all of nearly all the remaining ones would true as well should we research. And we always welcome additional information. This is a collaborative effort as you can see. You added information, and now two others added as well what you likely didn't know before.
Notice that the list is actually not solely of exploiters. There are also listed boy scout and YMCA programs that misinform people, as well as Rolland Dewing, a historian who wrote a hatchet job of a book on AIM while never revealing it had originally been a govt white paper, paid for by the feds.
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The follower of these people are so taken in by what they say they can not
see the truth, that is why we have some much trouble with these people,
they continue to steal what is not their to steal, they continue to make
cultures which lead people to really bad end.
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I am bumping this thread because some non-Natives interested in Idle No More are citing Starhawk as an influence, and I want them to be aware of her history.
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Damn. The NuageTricksters list link is dead. I would love to see that if anyone has screenies or a working link.
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Damn. The NuageTricksters list link is dead. I would love to see that if anyone has screenies or a working link.
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=2330.0
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Awesome, thank you Piff! And damn Geocities for closing down some of my fave pages and groups when it ceased ops.
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This is the same Starhawk, yes?
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Yes.
I couldn't get the pdf to load, but I'm pretty sure this is the url: http://www.permaculture.co.uk/videos/starhawk-why-permaculture-practical-aspect-sacred-earth
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Those who don't know her history, and who don't know history (and think her claims to be reviving anything authentic are true) still love her. But her offenses have increased, now with supporting dubious, possibly fake "elders" and defying the consenus of the actual Elders of the Oceti Sakowin to behave disruptively and colonially at Standing Rock. http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=4934.msg43182#msg43182
She showed up at the #NoDAPL actions blathering her ahistorical b.s. about being a witch, and expected to be treated like an Elder. Natives are still angered and offended about her colonial actions during her brief stay in camp, while she brags about it online, and her non-Native followers act like she's the white savior of the NDNs and here to lead all the white people into taking over NDN Country.
She hasn't claimed to be NDN, but she lies about the Celtic traditions, she does pay to pray and vultures from every culture imaginable, she sells fake ceremonies on the nuage circuit, she teaches the lie that "witch" means something good, and, worst of all, she continues to exploit and disrupt and harm Indigenous people and Indigenous events. She is an exploiter and a harmful person, under the guise of being an ecological and spiritual person. She makes white people feel good as they "om" under the trees, but she consistently damages Indigenous efforts at sovereignty, cultural preservation, and basic dignity. For this I think she belongs in Frauds.
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Here's her post on her experience. http://starhawk.org/thanksgiving-at-standing-rock/
I've called her out on Facebook, for not being a good ally. If the elders did disagree, why would you, as a white person go through with it? Just back off, and go away. She engaged in spiritual and protest tourism, and then self-promoted herself. By causing potential harm, and then leaving, you are not a good ally.
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They can't bring different religious things there because their idea of sanctifying the land might not be the same as ours."
Mr. Wesley said the Nakoda would never conduct their religious ceremonies in another location without permission. "We wouldn't go to Stonehenge to impose our beliefs on them and we wouldn't do our spiritual activity in New York City."
It seems to be something they just don't understand and when you try to explain it to them, they get offended! Very frustrating.
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... she lies about the Celtic traditions...
... she teaches the lie that "witch" means something good...
She has even admitted to that publicly when they printed the 20th anniversary issue of her book, "The Spiral Dance" (which I have read). She admitted that "a lot of it" was her creation, or that of other Wiccans, and not historically accurate.
As someone descended from the Celts and having studied them extensively, I wish to clarify that those women who were called "witches" were really mid-wives, herbalists, healers, and teachers. They were very good women who did all sorts of good things to help their people, but they never called themselves "witches". The stereotypes we see today in movies, television and the like, of women flying on broomsticks, harming children, doing all sorts of ridiculous things, etc., actually has its roots in the Inquisition. People under torture will admit to anything, as we all know, and today many Wiccans, through ignorance, perpetuate the inquisitors' lies. (There is an excellent film that was released in 1987 called "The Friar and the Sorceress" which depicts the true story of one such woman accused of being a "witch". I recommend it to anyone interested.)
Of course I do understand that this is different altogether from what Native Americans describe as a "witch". Just saying that when Starhawk tauts herself as a "witch" it is just plain fabrication and delusion.
I am sorry and dismayed to hear that Stawhawk and all these newagers are showing up at Standing Rock. It smacks of entitlement, arrogance and disrespect. Shame on them all.
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The well-known, sensationalized witchunts (called by Wiccans "the burning times") that were aimed at wiping out people who threatened the establishment, or who were obstacles in land grabs, have nothing to do with Celtic spirituality. Though it's common for Neo-Wiccans* like Starhawk/Simos to say otherwise. The witchhunts as a widespread phenomena against normal people were mostly a phenomena on the European continent, not in the Celtic Nations.
The lore about protection from witches in the Celtic nations is about dealing with harmful sorcery and those who practice it. It's a living tradition, like in the Americas, and it's taken seriously by those who work to protect people from evildoers.
So anyone who confuses or conflates the two is causing problems for themselves, and for the interconnected communities where these terms have vastly different meanings (or in the cases of real Celtic communities and Native ones, the same meaning).
Anyway, that's a tangent. I suggest if you want to discuss the Wiccan misinformation you make another thread in etc, or just add it to the Wicca threads we already have, and keep this thread about the person in particular.
*Neo-Wiccan because Starhawk's Wiccan group is even newer than the "BritTrad" Wicca groups that were started in the 1940s in England. Hers was started in California, either in the 1960s or 1980s, depending on which variation you consider the full tradition. This is covered in the threads on here that mention Victor Anderson, one of her teachers. His back story varied significantly, and he created his tradition out of eclectic readings, so it's really hard to put an exact date on any of it.
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I would like to suggest a more balanced view of Starhawk (Miriam Simos).
By this I do not mean to question anything about the anger that she trespassed a native land and held her own kind of ceremony on it as part of a protest. I believe she apologised for that. But verbal apology is easy to make especially for a public figure, so I would comment that a donation from the wealth of Reclaiming to the native land would have made the apology more substantial. A personal penance of some kind would also be appropriate: a request to make a discreet, private visit to a clan representative, to meditate together and accept a ritual punishment.
I met Starhawk in 1986 in London, UK, when she visited. I was then a leader rather like her, in British terms. I was a Craft priestess, and a Goddess follower. I was writing my first book about the Craft. I went on to become fairly well known (House of the Goddess, London; and the national Pagan Halloween Festival). I met Starhawk a couple more times over the years and worked with her in ritual Circle. I retired as a community priestess in 2010 and I am now doing a PhD in Celtic (Welsh) studies about the Mabinogi, Swansea University, Wales. I live in wales, married to a Welshman for 30 years.
Both Starhawk and I described a history of the Craft (western witchcraft) in our early books, which was inaccurate. It was a sincere inaccuracy as back in the early 1980s there was almost no serious scholarship on it. The standard narratives available were that witches were sorcerers who worked with demons (from the Church); or pathetic victims, old, ugly, despised scapegoats for community spite and a source of entertainment when tortured.
Later studies from feminist scholars asserted witches were often midwives and herbalists. (See Witches, Midwives and Nurses, by Ehrenreich) The politics of this was that the new male doctors wanted to close out village women practitioners, at the same time as they stole women's techniques.
As commented on here, the women concerned would not have called themselves witches. They would have considered themselves Christians, because everyone was, although they'd have known they were not mainstream.
What each approach does is shut out the others. I would not see the 'witches' as blameless healers, mere victims, or demonic meddlers, though I'd guess all of these existed. Some were probably good healers, midwives, nurses. Some were weak old women. Some were undoubtedly users of magic, the esoteric arts. The politics of takeover is well documented.
But at the time of our early books neither Starhawk or I, or anyone else, had access to this kind of reasoned knowledge. That came later.
What we did, though, is provide a much needed vision for our own people. Christianity has enfeebled and terrorised ordinary white people as well as native people. Starhawk and I are part of a movement to reclaim our own ancestral traditions, relearn native pride, body acceptance, and reject a foreign faith that serves the white master group. I think other native peoples might see a common pattern.
But there is a big difference. Other native peoples have a lot more surviving in records and practices. We have little, just fragments of myths, heavily contaminated folk customs and folk songs, some sayings. No ceremony at all. So we are forced to invent. Some invention is cautious, plodding, scholarly, while some is jolly, and careless of accuracy. Most of it aims at happiness and spiritual connection so the value of it is does it work?
I freely admit that many in my community exploits and tramples on native traditions and I hate that. They do it to my adopted people the Welsh and I especially hate that. Americans crash over here and yell their arrogance and mucked up versions of native American customs which they chuck in with Celtic stuff in an eclectic mush. They don't even try to learn a few words of our language. My husband John Davies was the first to call them out as "spiritual strip mining" (Three Things There Are ... 1993).
But while I criticise a great deal, and admit Starhawk and I were ignorant of history along with everyone else back in the day, I stoutly maintain Starhawk has done a great deal of good. The suppression of women's spirituality has been greatly cleansed. Huge numbers of people whose lives were blighted by Christianity have found a healthier and saner outlook. While a lot of this modern western spirituality is damn silly, it does serve a purpose. Most of all it enables us to go to a native place, perhaps the local woodland, and there talk quietly to our ancestors. Before Starhawk and I did our work, the vast majority of Western people would not imagine doing that. There is also a spiritual arm to the ecology movement.
But but finally I do criticise Starhawk's vision as authoritarian. In her recent fiction for example she describes a wonderful future people living in harmony with the Earth, where women and men work together, where colourful ceremony and myth feeds the soul. However, there is no room for dissent, for the outsider,who is pushed into exile. That I do criticise. It reflects the sometimes far too narrow outlook of the new Paganism which sets up its own orthodoxy. That it's based on values I like doesn't make it better to outlaw disagreement.
(You probably have similar problems in native councils as this is all too human.)
There you are. I would offer you a plea to see someone like Starhawk in a balanced way. By all means critique her for her trespass on native land - and demand real reparation. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater about someone who has done much good for thousands and thousands of otherwise lost people.
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Many of us here actually do know Starhawk and other people from her community. As we live here in the U.S. I'm going to hazard a guess we actually know her far better than you do. So please understand that you are not educating or informing us here. You are not enlightening us or giving us any new information. What you are doing is coming into an Indian-run community and whitesplaining.
I would like to suggest a more balanced view of Starhawk (Miriam Simos).
Whitesplaining by a non-Native acquaintance who also has a personal stake in the b.s. Simos sells is not more "balanced" than the combined knowledge of our volunteer, grassroots group of Natives and non-Natives, including elders, a number of whom have known this person since the early 1980s.
By this I do not mean to question anything about the anger that she trespassed a native land and held her own kind of ceremony on it as part of a protest. I believe she apologised for that.
No, there was no apology. You go on to say that she should be allowed to apologize in private. No, she transgressed publicly, many times now, so it is appropriate to critique her public actions and public writings and photo ops on the topic.
But at the time of our early books neither Starhawk or I, or anyone else, had access to this kind of reasoned knowledge. That came later.
This is simply untrue. The newage and occult communities didn't know about the living traditions in the Celtic Nations and diaspora, and the misinformation promoted by occult groups has done a lot of harm and even displaced the real traditions among some who really should know better. Traditional people tend to shun Wiccans, newagers, pay to pray, and those who call themselves witches. This is true among traditional people in the Celtic Nations as well as in Native communities on Turtle Island.
What we did, though, is provide a much needed vision for our own people.
The amount of misinformation neopagans need to unlearn argues against that. Many of us here were exposed to that misinformation. I'd say most of it did, and still does, far more harm than good. Some of the worst colonists at Standing Rock this summer were and are the neopagans (see the Frauds and Exploiters Profiting or Promoting Themselves off NoDAPL (http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=4934.0) thread). I'd say all you've done is give white people a boost in self-confidence as they run roughshod over Indians. And now you've come here to justify it and do it some more.
Starhawk and I are part of a movement to reclaim our own ancestral traditions, relearn native pride, body acceptance, and reject a foreign faith that serves the white master group. I think other native peoples might see a common pattern.
Non-natives on Turtle Island, or Americans who move to a Celtic Nation, are not "other native people" and it's racist to imply you are native because you are a neopagan. Wicca is not an ancestral tradition. Neopaganism is not "native pride". Most of what we see from that community is misappropriation and pretendians. You are not teaching us anything here; we have many survivors of that scene in our communities.
I'm not going to quote your long post about how white people have nothing ancestral to return to because it's simply not true. If you believe that it just means you're not part of the right community, haven't been accepted or trusted by the right people, or you haven't been willing to do the work. That kind of harmful disinformation is what leads white people to think they have no other choice than to steal from people of color. Just stop it.
Look, I'm not doing this to hurt your feelings, but your long rant whitesplaining and spindoctoring about neopaganism just shows that you didn't bother to do what we ask all new members to do here - to read the pinned threads and get up to speed. It's clear you didn't even read this very thread you are commenting in. You are obviously diving right in to defend someone you like without understanding who we are and what we do, as well as the deep background people here have, including in the areas you are trying to "educate" us about. You may not realize it or consciously intend it, but you are being incredibly condescending.
As for babies and bathwater... Starhawk has "empowered" a whole lot of white people to follow her example to ignore Native leadership, to choose as a white outsider who is and isn't an Elder, and to violate Indigenous boundaries and tradition if she doesn't agree. That's not a baby or bathwater that helps Indigenous people.
On a personal note I will disagree with you about her fiction. I think some of her fiction has been inspirational in that it proposes a vision for the future that encompasses both the dystopian and the utopian. It's still appropriative and at times unintentionally racist in the way that most white liberal viewpoints are, but at least, unlike her other published work, it's clearly labeled as fiction.
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I would like to suggest a more balanced view of Starhawk (Miriam Simos).
By this I do not mean to question anything about the anger that she trespassed a native land and held her own kind of ceremony on it as part of a protest. I believe she apologised for that. But verbal apology is easy to make especially for a public figure, so I would comment that a donation from the wealth of Reclaiming to the native land would have made the apology more substantial. A personal penance of some kind would also be appropriate: a request to make a discreet, private visit to a clan representative, to meditate together and accept a ritual punishment.
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It's not for you to suggest or decide. It's up to the now multiple communities she's offended
I met Starhawk in 1986 in London, UK, when she visited. I was then a leader rather like her, in British terms. I was a Craft priestess, and a Goddess follower. I was writing my first book about the Craft. I went on to become fairly well known (House of the Goddess, London; and the national Pagan Halloween Festival). I met Starhawk a couple more times over the years and worked with her in ritual Circle. I retired as a community priestess in 2010 and I am now doing a PhD in Celtic (Welsh) studies about the Mabinogi, Swansea University, Wales. I live in wales, married to a Welshman for 30 years.
I'm sorry. I've had the unfortunate circumstance of having met her as well.
Both Starhawk and I described a history of the Craft (western witchcraft) in our early books, which was inaccurate. It was a sincere inaccuracy as back in the early 1980s there was almost no serious scholarship on it. The standard narratives available were that witches were sorcerers who worked with demons (from the Church); or pathetic victims, old, ugly, despised scapegoats for community spite and a source of entertainment when tortured.
Later studies from feminist scholars asserted witches were often midwives and herbalists. (See Witches, Midwives and Nurses, by Ehrenreich) The politics of this was that the new male doctors wanted to close out village women practitioners, at the same time as they stole women's techniques.
As commented on here, the women concerned would not have called themselves witches. They would have considered themselves Christians, because everyone was, although they'd have known they were not mainstream.
What each approach does is shut out the others. I would not see the 'witches' as blameless healers, mere victims, or demonic meddlers, though I'd guess all of these existed. Some were probably good healers, midwives, nurses. Some were weak old women. Some were undoubtedly users of magic, the esoteric arts. The politics of takeover is well documented.
But at the time of our early books neither Starhawk or I, or anyone else, had access to this kind of reasoned knowledge. That came later.
In the United States there has been academic studies of the witch trials since at least 1840. One of the most comprehensive books which includes legal redress is What Happened in Salem? by David Levin which was published in 1960. There's also the fact that Judge Sewall apologized, accepted all of the blame for the wrongness of the trials and begged pardon. I mean, that right there calls bullshit on the whole witches in the new world thing (which still happens to be a huge money making business for the uninformed ignorant witchy-wiccan-wannabe masses). You're been duped mam.
What we did, though, is provide a much needed vision for our own people. Christianity has enfeebled and terrorised ordinary white people as well as native people. Starhawk and I are part of a movement to reclaim our own ancestral traditions, relearn native pride, body acceptance, and reject a foreign faith that serves the white master group. I think other native peoples might see a common pattern.
No, they were provided with make believe.
But there is a big difference. Other native peoples have a lot more surviving in records and practices. We have little, just fragments of myths, heavily contaminated folk customs and folk songs, some sayings. No ceremony at all. So we are forced to invent. Some invention is cautious, plodding, scholarly, while some is jolly, and careless of accuracy. Most of it aims at happiness and spiritual connection so the value of it is does it work?
Really? Really? Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?
I freely admit that many in my community exploits and tramples on native traditions and I hate that. They do it to my adopted people the Welsh and I especially hate that. Americans crash over here and yell their arrogance and mucked up versions of native American customs which they chuck in with Celtic stuff in an eclectic mush. They don't even try to learn a few words of our language. My husband John Davies was the first to call them out as "spiritual strip mining" (Three Things There Are ... 1993).
What do you do about it?
But while I criticise a great deal, and admit Starhawk and I were ignorant of history along with everyone else back in the day, I stoutly maintain Starhawk has done a great deal of good. The suppression of women's spirituality has been greatly cleansed. Huge numbers of people whose lives were blighted by Christianity have found a healthier and saner outlook. While a lot of this modern western spirituality is damn silly, it does serve a purpose. Most of all it enables us to go to a native place, perhaps the local woodland, and there talk quietly to our ancestors. Before Starhawk and I did our work, the vast majority of Western people would not imagine doing that. There is also a spiritual arm to the ecology movement.
"Women's Spirituality" has to be one of the most appropriative oppressive colonial things I have ever encountered. It's horrific. It has been so thoroughly cleansed that you will rarely see people of color involved.
Are you aware of how oppressive the ecology movement has been until NoDAPL? Actually it's STILL problematic within NoDAPL because white people just can't give up that control.
But but finally I do criticise Starhawk's vision as authoritarian. In her recent fiction for example she describes a wonderful future people living in harmony with the Earth, where women and men work together, where colourful ceremony and myth feeds the soul. However, there is no room for dissent, for the outsider,who is pushed into exile. That I do criticise. It reflects the sometimes far too narrow outlook of the new Paganism which sets up its own orthodoxy. That it's based on values I like doesn't make it better to outlaw disagreement.
(You probably have similar problems in native councils as this is all too human.)
I have never read her fiction though I did read one of her books that was a compilation of her friends writings. It included Francis Talbot aka Medicine Story aka Manitonquat a ceremony seller who makes his living off pretending to be a Wampanoag Elder.
There you are. I would offer you a plea to see someone like Starhawk in a balanced way. By all means critique her for her trespass on native land - and demand real reparation. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater about someone who has done much good for thousands and thousands of otherwise lost people.
See if somebody repeatedly screws indigenous peoples over with no qualms it speaks a lot about them as a person. There is no baby, there is no bathwater, there is a woman out for herself who is willing to use Natives over and over abusively. Abusers abuse.
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"Morgain"s long tangent and a few replies to it, have been moved to her intro thread, here: http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=3442.msg43325#msg43325
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I am bumping this thread because some non-Natives interested in Idle No More are citing Starhawk as an influence, and I want them to be aware of her history.
I am aware of, and have been watching her history unfold, for some 30 years now. She was invited to give a lecture in Oslo, Norway, at the time, and I was invited to attend, probably because I was considered a student of Indigenous Religions. If memory serves me right, it turned out to be more than a lecture, it was also some kind of ceremony, and everyone was asked to follow some silly (IMO) instructions. This made me extremely uncomfortable, and I had to leave the room after a while.
Others were not abhorred. A Norwegian academic went to San Francisco to study and live with Starhawk and the likes of her. This resulted in a PhD dissertation (in English) in Oslo 1996: "I am a Witch – a healer and a bender. An expression of women’s Religiosity in contemporary USA”. In 2002 a shortened version was published as a book in the U.S.:
Enchanted Feminism: Ritual, Gender and Divinity Among the Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco
This is the first major study of the most famous Reclaiming Witch community, founded in 1979 in San Francisco, written by an author who herself participated in a coven for ten years. Jone Salomonsen describes and examines the communal and ritual practices of Reclaiming, asking how these promote personal growth and cultural-religious change.
The same author later wrote the article about Starhawk in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, 2003, pp. 1595—1596.
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Enchanted Feminism: Ritual, Gender and Divinity Among the Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco
It is possible to look inside the book and see the TOC. At the top of the back cover Starhawk recommends it.
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Given recent information that's come to our attention I'd like to clarify this statement:
Non-natives on Turtle Island, or Americans who move to a Celtic Nation, are not "other native people"
More accurately: Non-natives on Turtle Island; or Americans, English people or other non-Celtic folks who move to a Celtic Nation, are not "other native people".
English people aren't Welsh, either.
(Anything more on this is a tangent and can go in the tangent thread. Only clarifying this bit here due to the response still being in this thread.)