Ashby's Faux Indian Odyssey

[wolfhawaii]

Quote (by Ashby)
Posted - 11/02/2008
..........Faux Indians specialize in cruelty as a means of control. Faux Indians served me the single most painful experience of my adult life. What happened to me will NEVER happen to another if I have anything to say about it ....and I do.(end Ashby quote)
(quote by Moma Porcupine)
I wonder who these people were? I haven't seen where she has specifically named them or said what they did to her. Is this someone who is listed here? Is this someone NAFPS could list a warning about? (end quote by Moma Porcupine)


I have been doing some reading and trying to understand these issues....it seems according to Ashby's website Faux Indians that the cause of her "crusade" is her former association with  the Diamond Brown Sr. family of Snowbird community. Has anyone (especially from ECBI) researched these allegations thoroughly? I am concerned by these allegations but find Ashby to be a questionable resource based on her history of interactions with others on the Internet. I could use some help trying to sort this out.

[Sizzle Flambé]

In case it helps: <http://tinyurl.com/filteredgoogle-diamond-brown>

(Googling "Diamond Brown" AND ANY OF "cherokee", "snowbird", "betsy-ashby",
BUT EXCLUDING FALSE HITS WITH THE WORDS "tote", "carat", "sapphire", "brick",
"kamik", "doberman", "rolex", "geneve", "monaco", "bahama", "keyword", "desiree".
You can add or subtract search terms at the page this link brings up.)

For what it's worth, the only allegations of wrongdoing I found in that are Ashby's own.

[wolfhawaii]

http://www.pagan.com/FauxIndians/SnowbirdConClan/MakingofFauxIndian.html

This is Ashby's site referencing what got her started routing out Faux Indians. If there is substance to her allegations this is a serious issue; if there is NO substance to them it is also very serious from another perspective.

[Rattlebone]

 From what I read in the link you provided, it seems the issue there is exploiters, which of course is the same thing that is hunted down and exposed on this site. However as has been pointed out by many including Educated Indian, and Moma Porcupine on this site; Ashby has gone above and beyond hunting down exploiters and has wrongly turned her attention to unenrolled mixedbloods. I have seen Ashby engage in that behavior myself, and have challenged her on it many times.  She is wrong for doing that, and has no business in the area of Indian identity when she is in fact not one herself.

 Also as has been pointed out on this site, if those who are enrolled or undeniably Indian point out to Ashby that she is in the wrong for her behavior, she then attacks them as well. Often times when this happens she accuses them of backing exploiters or other things. I have seen that myself as well.

[wolfhawaii]

According to info posted on her site, Ashby was adopted into a clan based on her alleged contact with the Brown Sr. family.....something must have gone downhill since then. She chooses to focus mainly on Gayle Brown (GC) and doesn't have much to say regarding Diamond Brown Sr., which i find curious.

[NCRunningWolf]

Ashby, in her attacks upon me, as an unenrolled mixed blood, posted my husband's name, address, and phone number.
Ray had been quite ill for years, both physically and emotionally.
She then posted him as a domestic abuser and a predator.
He had pushed me, and I used that as an excuse to get him into counseling, and the help he so badly needed.
Court records are public records.
Ray was a very private, proud and generous person.
I made the mistake of telling him what was happening.
He was more fragile than I thought.
He committed suicide not long after that.
This past July 8th, I walked in and found him.
I think the harassment and the lies, the opening up of his most private life, all just too much for him.

[wolfhawaii]

Sorry to hear about your husband, you have my sincere condolences. I have not been able to read far enough back on alt.native to see why Ashby was attacking you, but she seems to enjoy being cruel. The people she is attacking at Snowbird have a reputation as helpers and i hope someone here with some time and good research skills can determine if the affadavits listed on Ashby's site have merit or not.

[Sizzle Flambé]

Public documentation: <http://tinyurl.com/obit-ray-w-wilson-jr>

Note that despite being provided that link, Ashby insists Ray isn't really dead, and continues to attack "him" as well as Ms. RunningWolf.

Ironically, in another issue on her website, Ashby proudly asserted that "Being Virginians, we did not wish to mess with folks while they were grieving. You just don't do that in the South regardless of how much someone has offended you...".

She sure abandoned that principle when "messing with" Ms. RunningWolf while she was grieving.

[NCRunningWolf]

Sorry to hear about your husband, you have my sincere condolences. I have not been able to read far enough back on alt.native to see why Ashby was attacking you, but she seems to enjoy being cruel. The people she is attacking at Snowbird have a reputation as helpers and i hope someone here with some time and good research skills can determine if the affadavits listed on Ashby's site have merit or not.

Well, at first it was supposedly in "defense" of Bernard Red Cherries and Sal Serbin.  I had voiced an opinion on another blog about Sal Serbin.  Then she found a dreamcatcher that I supposedly made, http://www.pagan.com/FauxIndians/images/Runningwolf_4.jpg http://www.pagan.com/FauxIndians/images/Runningwolf_6.jpg
It is not mine,  I never use yarn, nor did I make those small ones.  The "legend" shown may have my name on it, the seller may have gotten another d.c. from my brother in law as she was married to him, but that tacky thing is not my work.  So she then attacked me on "selling" ceremony to poor misguided pagans.  The seller also stated I was Navajo.  I am not. 
Then it was my birth date.  I had a passport with my dad showing my dob as 1935, I also had a driver's license that my mother attested to my date of birth showing 1937.  My actual dob is 1940.
I went to a boarding school which took in Native children, mostly mixed bloods, and "wayward" teens.  It was funded partially from government funding, but mostly from donations.  I am sure most have seen the type of ads that go out asking for donations to church funded schools.
I choose not to name that  school, as that function has been long closed, and the organization now caters to upper middle class and  wealthy students.  I understand they are doing a good job, and why upset that?  It will not change  my life, nor will it bring back the dead.
I have refused to say what Nations my dad was affiliated with.  I have said  that in the past, and will not give her that information.  As I am not enrolled in either Nation, what would be the point of her calling the enrollment department?
These are her supposed points of contention.
Oh, then there is the issue with my husband.  I am not even going to go there.  Nor will I bring up the supposed "sock puppets". 

[Moma_porcupine]

Nora

I am really sorry to hear of how seriously your husband may have been impacted by Betsy's seemingly pointless harrassment.
 
There already many examples of this in the thread on Enemies of NAFPS.

http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=1234.0

It's hard to know all the particualrs of a dispute that happened somewhere else, and I have only managed to read through part of this, but from what I read, Nora summed it up pretty well. Betsy is once again seeming to make a huge big deal out of some very minor things, and presenting a collection of evidence which doesn't necesssarily lead to the conclusion she reaches.

Betsy is also accusing Nora of pretending to be her own friends, and saying she has posted under various screen names for years. In some of these accusations Betsy posted links to the threads and long rows of numbers she says anyone with the intellegence of a snail darter would know proved this. Other times Betsy just posts the date and time of the posts so i'm not even sure if anyone could access them and apparently my own intellegence is less than a snail darter because it's all incomprehensible goobldy gook to me.

If Betsy thought Nora plays with sock pupppets, it would seem reasonable to alert people and point out the evidence, but to continue to pursue this and her other minor complaints like some serious criminal behavoir has occured seems really inappropriate.

It seems like maybe Betsy has a really hard time judging porportions and she can't tell the difference between what may be at worst a normal human personality quirk, and someone who is misrepresenting themself to wrongly gain a serious position of public trust.

For the record , here is an example of the type of harrassment that was going on...

http://groups.google.co.nz/group/alt.native/browse_thread/thread/d49
13712c9bf28af/74eed9644b3d9189
   

From: Guardian <guard...@OutoftheDark.com>
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009
Local: Sat, Jul 4 2009
Subject: Re: Norah-Christine Runningwolf is BUSTED

Hello again  Runningwolf/James/Anuh1/Bravesheart
I did not want you or anyone else to think I had forgotten you....oh
noooooooooooo, far from it.

When you aligned yourself with a sexual predator, you gave yourself a
boost on my priority list. When someone sinks that low, I know
EXACTLY what I am dealing with, so I decided to do a deep dig.

I am still compiling megs of data into an understandable spreadsheet,
but I should have your Faux Indian page up by late next week.

I know what you have been doing on alt.native for at least TEN YEARS,
and you are one SICK PUPPY!

I read how you created, then killed off "Anuh1" ...that got you lots
of attention huh?  SICK!!!!
I also know that the "Bravesheart" posts were coming from your
location too.  You will be surprised at what an AOL network engineer
with 20 years experience can tell from a few little headers.  How
fortunate that I happen to know one  <BEG>

I am not going to waste time arguing with your sockpuppets on Usenet,
I am just going to put all the info on a website,  mass mail the link
to our entire mailing list, and let people see for themselves what a
MAGGOT you really are!

You will continue to attack me and spread lies about me.... I know
that.  It is the price of telling the truth about a LIAR like
you...you will spread yet more lies about me.  Like  DUH..that is all
on-line frauds like you do to create your characters.  You are
running  the Good Nic/Bad Nic scam, and I am going to prove it, once
and for all.

I have no intention of wasting my time responding to your many
sockpuppets.  I am going to spend that time exposing you for what you
really are...  a skanky, chicken hawk ANGLO PERVERT who has no morals
or values whatsoever!  I really do not care what people think of me,
but your willingness to use a sexual predator's "anonymous" website as
ammunition tells me EVERYTHING I need to know about you.  It also
guaranteed to you permanent spot on the web with the rest of the pervs
we have exposed.

I just wanted you to know your posts referencing "anonymous rumors"
about me, spread by a man who sold sex tours to Asia where raping
children is legal have insured that you and James/Bravesheart, etc.
will be publicly exposed as the fraud you are on  a domain that gets
about 1500-2000 hits a day.

(con..)
My bold

To people reading this, it sounds like Betsy is saying Nora is personally affiliated with a pervert. 

Other posts reveal the person Betsy is accusing of being a pervert, is someone she calls Wheeler. (more on this below ) From stuff I read over on Indianz.com, it sounds like Wheeler created a webpage which made somes serious allegations against Betsy, and Betsy was accusing Wheeler of being a pervert. Who accused who first I don't know , but the sanity of everyone involved seems questionable, and IMO all of these allegations are about as credible as something you see written on the wall of a public toilet....   

Though I haven't found where this happened , it sounds like Betsy is accusing Nora of somehow republishing these accusations... However, even if Nora did this,  I'm not sure why Betsy would assume that Nora would somehow personally know the person who put up this website - or that she would know she was 'alligning" herself with someone Betsy had accused of being a pervert. From what i've seen of Betsy in action, there wouldn't need to be any logical connection at all...

Betsy makes it sound like Nora and her family were personaly involved with the person who created this website which makes serious allegations agaist Betsy, and that Nora and family were somehow actively supporting his alleged perverted activities.

Notice in this post, Betsy doesn't name Wheeler in what she is saying. She just repeatedly links Nora with someone she accuses of being a pervert.  As far as I know there is no logical reason to assume any personal relationship exists, but some readers could easily get the impression the alleged pervert is someone Nora is personally affiliated with ( such as her husband ) and not an to entirely different situation and person. This is especially true if Betsy was also posting information about a prior charge of domestic violence.

It's also clearly stated that the webpage Betsy is threatening to create, which would be dedicated to discrediting Nora and her family  as faux Indians, is being done in retaliation for Nora allegedly somehow mentioning the accusations against Betsy on this other website. It also sounds like Betsy was planning on using this alleged alligence to somehow make it sound Nora and her family are perverts. Otherwise why would Betsy call Nora a chicken hawk? 

This is a really serious accusation and according to my sense of right and wrong , would not at all be justified by Nora's alleged mention of some of the information on Wheeler's website, or any of the other seemingly trivial complaints Betsy has about Nora.

What seems totally goulish, is that while claiming to be justified in persecuting Nora and her family for somehow reposting these allegations, Betsy claims she hasn't had these seriously defamatory allegations against her removed from this website because she is intentionally using this as bait .... 

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.native/browse_thread/thread/8de6edee
0b1c5d5c/5c1d15fe2575da9e?lnk=raot&fwc=1

Guardian <guard...@OutoftheDark.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2009
Local: Wed, Aug 5 2009

Subject: Re: Do any of you know of this person?
(begins)
Oh, I might have also forgotten to mention that every time someone
reposts Wheeler'libel, it gives me (ie my attorney)  "John Doe"
Subpoena rights to their provider's identifying info for the account
libeling me.... in order to determine if the offender is worth suing.
If they are not worth suing, I can legally expose and confront the
people who hid behind what they thought were anonymous accounts to
defame me.

Now you know why Wheeler's website is still up.  ROFLUIPM

(continues)

What kind of person thinks like this?

The only consistent concern I can see Betsy executing, is she tends to go after vulnerable unenrolled mixed blood people. ( even though enrolled Native people have repeatedly told Betsy that most of them are who they say they are)

Not everything in the links below would apply to betsy, but I did find some of it seems to describe her tactics exactly.

I'm thinking people who may feel unfairly harrassed by her might find some of this helpful.

http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/amibeing.htm#What

http://www.bullyoffline.org/related/cyber.htm

I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if any of this would be relevent, or if any laws were broken , but I seem to recal Betsy saying sahe is in NC and it might be something to look into...

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection
/Chapter_14/GS_14-196.html

Seeing Betsy Ashby's tactics is like watching a train wreak and as she sort of claims to be doing the same thing we try to do here, it makes me want to try to explain the difference, and point out how she goes off the rails.

The nicest thing I can say about betsy is if she is sincere in wanting to do some good ( which at this point I doubt - but everyone can change ) she really needs to learn some better communication skills. If she is really exposing a liar, telling the truth in a gentle polite way will be humiliating enough . She doesn't need to call people names, or make an effort to punish and humiliate these people beyond simply telling the truth.

Just from what I have seen, it seems Betsy would improve her effectiveness if she could understand that presenting evidence (especially selected evidence) that supports a conclusion does not necessarily mean the conclusion is "the truth" . Usually evidence can be used to support several conclusions, and exactly how evidence should be interpreted can be debated from various angles. Ultimently, exposing people misrepresenting themself on line isn't about reaching a guilty verdict which  can be resolved by a jail sentence or some other imposed punishment. What we do here online can only resolve these problems by teaching people critical thinking skills and empowering people that it's OK to ask questions. From ALL angles.

Wolfhawaii, I think  your suggestion that some of us could go over some of Betsy's research is a good one. One problem is that I am not comfortable visiting her website or viewing anything she has posted (links or pictures) .

If someone could do a basic summery of the evidence she has posted, it's alleged source and her conclusions maybe some of us here could do some peer reviews of her findings.

I really do feel concerned Betsy is confusing the issues even more with her nasty, petty, personal attacks and by sticking stuff together to "build a case" that isn't really connected.

People who post in NAFPS make mistakes, but at least there is enough people involved here we don't all have the same biases, blind spots  and opinions and if someone gets off track in their personal interpretation , someone else is likely to challenge this by pointing this out.

Sorry this is so long, but i really do feel concerned about the damage this person seems to be causing...
     

[NCRunningWolf]

I did not post that site in which Ashby is maligned. Although she has stated what is on the internet is fair game, evidently not when it concerns her. The numbers she posts "proving" I am all these people, or have a cast of hundreds in my living room are false.  Anv was a dear friend of mine, and certainly not me, nor am I James.  My husband, towards the end of his life, was unable to dial a phone well, let alone operate a computer.  I am not really sure where her animosity towards me comes from.  I live alone in the desert, away from many people and my family, and the  ng's were a social place for me.  I now have to go to moderated groups.  As I lived on two reservations for many years, my kids are enrolled, native issues are not only an interest, but have some concerns for me. I was sorry to see alt. native, (which was always kinda  rough and tumble, but never like this!!), fall prey.
I am not sure how things work, but I do know that Lisa is in Hawaii, and not in Arizona, as Ashby insists, and Anv posted out of Mt. Judah, Arkansas.  I am not sure where James is at the moment, he was in Montana.  Bravesheart posts out of Georgia, and also uses E.Y.Y. as a screen name.
It is just too confusing to me.

[NCRunningWolf]

This may explain her animosity.
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=1234.0
I have repeatedly said that I am so against new age people purloining Ceremony. I have spoken out against having non-Natives at Sun Dance and doing sweats.
I believe it is dangerous to call up Spirits and then not know what to do with them.
I thinks it really ticks the Spirit off, and an angry Spirit is a dangerous one.
Ashby has a woman now who claims to have all the Peruvian Indian Ceremony knowledge.
I wonder if I spoke out against someone or something she  supports?

[Sizzle Flambé]

... I seem to recall Betsy saying she is in NC and it might be something to look into...

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_14/GS_14-196.html

^{(fixed broken link)}

Betsy has a home in NC, but goes back to her "compound" (store and campground) in VA to run events.

That passage of NC law does seem to fit, doesn't it?

... to knowingly make any false statement concerning [...] indecent conduct or criminal conduct of the person telephoned^* or of any member of his family or household with the intent to abuse, annoy, threaten, terrify, harass, or embarrass...

* For purposes of this section, the term "telephonic communications" shall include communications made or received by way of a telephone answering machine or recorder, telefacsimile machine, or computer modem.

[educatedindian]

Stumbled upon this, and it's a bit gratifying. The original faux "Miami shaman" that Ashby defended and first began attacking NAFPS for daring to criticize, John Wilde AKA Grey Medicine Wolfe, himself was criticized by VA Indian tribes and leaders. Wolfe agreed to quit doing his faux version of sweatlodges.

Not only that, Ashby basically admitted Wolfe is not really a Miami at all. In Ashby's words:

http://www.outofthedark.com/WitchTower/Archives/JohnWilde/index.html
"...John never claimed to be a Tribal member, he just said one of his ancestors made whoopee with a Miami Indian, which is the truth according to his Mother and Grandmother."

IOW, he possibly had a single Miami descendant according to family tradition, but he's not Miami. Ashby's description makes it sound like a brief liason, not anyone ever having been raised in Miami culture. It may've been a single great grandparent, or perhaps even further back. He's a PODIA with 1/8 or less unproven allegation of BQ, no contact, and knowing little about Miami tradition.

Naturally Ashby had to resort to her typical bigotry, claiming it somehow proves persecution by "fundie Christians."

For the record, Ashby, criticism is not persecution. And there's no sign that the Tidewater NDNs are fundamentalists except your paranoid bigoted description.

It's also worth noting her reaction included asking all VA pagans to cease all support of NDN causes, and a further bizarre bit of bigotry where she claims that NDNs can't be Christians. Quick, someone tell the Yaqui. Or the whole NAC.

It's to Wilde's credit that he agreed to do the right thing when asked to, quit his faux sweatlodges. Quite a contrast between his graciousness and ethical behavior and Ashby's hysteria and vicious bigoted grudges.

[NCRunningWolf]

This may seem off topic, however, in response to some people claiming sockpuppetry of others.
But opednews has been hacked. and in there little page of discussion of that, there is this, which
seems to refute some statements made as to ip's being traceable.
I would assume that other IP's may have the same way of doing things, as it would appear to me, a total technoidiot, as a more cost efficient way to go.
Bold underlining is mine.

http://www.opednews.com/flyer/news_20090920_1.html

"If you use an AOL internet address, you might find yourself unable to
log in. Let us know and we can fix that. **The problem is that AOL
uses the same IP address for thousands of people, ** so if we ban one
person with an AOL email address, all the people with the same IP are
affected, until we whitelist them. If you get such a message, you
should get an email with a link. Send it to me rob at opednews dot com
and I can quickly fix the problem."