General > Frauds

Oscar (Oz) De Los Santos, Tribal Thunder

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WINative:
None of the people I talked to in Six Nations who are active in their community ever heard of him. So he must be slipping through the cracks.

educatedindian:
A college student is making a documentary on Santos. Here's my response to his email asking about the Tribal Thunder site.

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Santos sells virtually nothing that's actually Native:
Tarot is European.
Mandalas are from India.
Sun tea is from Asia.
Elixirs are from Euro paganism.
Didgerido is Australian Aboriginal.
Most of the rest are vague self help, pop psychology, or Nuage.
Cymatix seems to be his own hokey teaching.

Almost all of it is appropriation and misrepresentation. All of it is unethical, exploitative, and falsely presented as something it's not. It's deliberately designed to appeal to those who know the least about Natives.

Actual Native elders are in their communities. They don't sell out their culture online for profit to outsiders.

I hope you go forward with your film and discuss his falsehoods at length. Is this near Toronto? There are many urban Indians and local communities you could ask their opinion about this. I urge you to include their voices.

educatedindian:
I received an email from Tribal Thunder. Followed by my response.

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Hi, I hope your day is going well.
I work with Tribal Thunder, and its founder Oscar De Los Santos. Earlier this summer it came to my attention there were some issues with wording on our website, and misinterpretations which needed clarity. There is dialogue on your website in regards to this. After viewing the concerns on your forum we went through our own website with a fine-toothed comb to be more precise in wording and remove anything that may be a source of miscommunication.
It has been a few months now since the initial "chat" displayed on your site. Is it possible to remove the form posting or update it with a proper and correct response?
Oz has been working in the aboriginal community for over 16 years, and there are many people of Six Nations who consider him an asset. Although there are a great number of people who can and would testify on behalf of the integrity and honourability of Oz, it only takes a few comments left unresponded to, to cause a potentially difficult situation (simply, it would be a great shame if Oz could no longer serve the people as he has for so long).

Please let me know the best way to set things clear and the best course of action from your perspective. The work you do, and the truth your website offers is a great service and I appreciate your thoroughness when responding to the issues posted on your website.

With respect and kind regards,
-Ashley Camara

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Hello Ms. Camara,

We do not remove postings from our site, ever, especially not because a Nuage site asks us to in order to protect their business/profits.
We move research threads to No Longer a Matter of Concern if our evidence was in error, or if exploiters or frauds change their ways.

The facts remain: De los Santos is a white Nuager, posing as a Native medicine man for over a decade for profit.
He "teaches" an exploitative Nuage hodgepodge, cobbled together from many traditions, none of them depicted or taught accurately.
He falsely claims to be a Six Nations elder. He's an outsider, and none of our members could find anyone who'd heard of him. Online searches show he peddles almost entirely to whites, worst of all to schools. That any Six Nations use him or rely on him would be destructive colonialism.

A few rewordings on his site doesn't change any of the above. Only if your group quit peddling false exploitative versions of indigenous traditions, and De los Santos ceased posing as a medicine man, would the thread be moved.

Is he, and is your group, willing to quit being exploiters?

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