Scarlet Kinney & The Standing Bear Center For Shamanic Studies

[debbieredbear]

I have a suggestion for backgroundd music for their website after reading "lynxwoman" (and yes, Al, we have Lynxes up here on the Olympic Peninsula but I bet LW would not wish to meet one). I can't remember the name of the group but it starts out: "Money money money MONNNEEEY!" LOL! And fredrica beat me to the part about Cherokees not having shamans. As far as I know, Cherokees aren't from Siberia. And LW is doing the classic scream about a person being an elder. Yeah, with a small "e". An Elder should be respected. Scartlet is an elder, or as some say, an older. And another thing, if she really was what she says she is, I doubt she would have come unglued like she did, and raged at us. And then sent her toady after us. A snotty white woman who uses the reverse racism card. Missy, you would not know racism if it bit you in the ass. And you wouldn't survive in brown skin because then you would have to deal with people like yourself: arrogant and rude. You may or may not have a gggrandmother who was a Cherokee Princess. But you are not Cherokee. Not because of lack of blood, but because you think like a white woman. And that's the difference.

[Slow_Thunder]

TO PLH:

You wrote:

Ok let me see if I understand this correctly. Please correct any misunderstanding I may have. You are white, not NDN.

****A wonderful Maliseet spiritual elder helped me to understand something about myself that I'll pass on to you. I confided in her concerning my difficulty in accepting what happened to me, and what I'm now doing, as I was raised Irish Catholic. She told me that it wasn't the color of my skin that counted, it was what was in my heart, and how I walked on Mother Earth.and Another friend, a Passamaquoddy, said over and over to me: "Just because you're red, doesn't mean you're red", ? until I understood her point_ that just because I'm white doesn't mean I'm not red in my heart. These were very healing experiences for me. There are stories of NDN ancestry in my family. I am currently researching that, but as I have not yet been able to prove it, I would never make any claims about it. However, I have often wondered whether or not what happened to me was the result of NDN genetic memory...I was raised Catholic, and would have expected angels to appear to me, or the Virgin Mother, etc., but it was Bear Spirits who prevented my death, returned me to the body, healed me, and asked me to share certain teachings with others. That's certainly not a Catholic experience, is it?

You refer to a Medicine Wheel, that is a white concept?
****I don't believe I have ever posited that the Medicine Wheel is a white concept, and if I have, shame on me, because of course it's not, and I don't understand it as such. But because of my mythological and depth psychology studies, I was able to recognize the Native American Medicine Wheel as a sacred mandala. To the best of my knowledge, it is the only sacred mandala to have arisen from the cultures of this land, this geography. My culture is largely ignorant of this fact, as well as exhibiting a profound ignorance of the deep, sophistated and complex philosophy of Native American psychology. In addition, there is still a great deal of racist prejudice and insulting stereotyping directed at Native peoples in this country. Part of what I'm trying to accomplish is to counter such ignorance by exploring the Medicine Wheel in terms that white culture can grasp.

Sorry I have to re-word rather than steal a quote from you here: You are the keeper of certain teachings of the Bear Spirit Clan that it "seems" you carried in your genetic memory? How do you "seem" to carry anything in your genetic memory?
****I'm a North woman. I possess very ? few diplomatic skills. I didn't want to assertively state that I AM the keeper of certain teachings of the Bear Spirit Clan that I carried in genetic memory, although I am, and I do, and the trauma of my initiation somehow opened up that incredible genetic capsule and made its content available for me.
?
Perhaps you could concentrate on your own imbalance.
****It's a long journey to the Center, isn't it?

[Slow_Thunder]

Hello, everybody. It's "Scarlet the Unglued Older", again. Very funny. Thanks for providing me with a good belly laugh. I do think I may keep the title, as it certainly does describe me rather well at times.
I wish I had time to respond to each individual posting, but as I'm dealing with two very sick family members, I'm a little pushed for time.
I'll try to get back to each of you as soon as I can, because I think the discussion we've begun, however difficult it seems to be at present, is a tremendously positive thing, and one that is long overdue. It's wonderful that so many people are taking part in it.
One of the ways of beginning a healing process consists of using language to rile everybody up about a very painful situation, so that the true feelings of all involved begin to be expressed. It's one of the techniques I use, and as you can see, it's been very effective in this instance.
The kind of fear, anger, racist thinking, etc. that my words aroused in so many of you is merely the tip of the iceberg.
I'm not only talking here about what's going on on this site right now. I'm talking about the shared history of almost every person walking on this land today, whatever their ancestry or cultural heritage may be.
We are all the daughters and sons of our Mother the Earth. What we are suffering from, and what our ancestors suffered from, is patriarchy, a grotesque inflation of the powers of the Sky gods by white male culture.
We must not accuse and blame one another in these times, because doing so reflects a patriarchal influence intended to divide people of heart from one another so that patriarchy can be perpetuated. Ideally, we will talk together, cry together, even rage together, and in the end, heal ourselves and one another.
This is what I invite each and every person involved in this tempestuous debate to join me in doing. Bless and keep you all.

[Slow_Thunder]

TO EDUCATED INDIAN:
While your arguments regarding the science of genetics are erudite and no doubt correct from a white male dominated patriarchal culture's scientific perspective, they are not only off the wall when it comes to understanding women's ways, they are just plain misguided.
Until you back up a little, take a deep breath, and offer me an apology for this appalling behavior, and make some kind of amends, I will not respond to or read another word you may say on this site.
Shame on you for disrespecting women and for using the horrible suffering of two human beings as a weapon to deliver malice. Your behavior is not only unconscionable, it's unforgivable.

[Barnaby_McEwan]

One of the ways of beginning a healing process consists of using language to rile everybody up about a very painful situation, so that the true feelings of all involved begin to be expressed. It's one of the techniques I use, and as you can see, it's been very effective in this instance.

That wasn't a technique. You threw a tantrum and now realise how childish you look. What typical newager arrogance that you believe we need healing, and that you're going to heal us. Well, they say laughter is the best medicine.

The kind of fear, anger, racist thinking, etc. that my words aroused in so many of you is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Get over yourself. We've already dealt with the daft accusations of racism and you forgot to mention the gales of mirth your posts also arouse.

It was from a landscape such as the one Captain Wynne describes that my ancestors fled County Clare for America. I cannot know of that time directly, from personal experience.

No, it was 160 years ago!

I do, however, know of it indirectly, as a closely held family secret, as something.....[that] ... was nevertheless transmitted from generation to generation by way of behaviors, customs, and the role food and the preparation of food played in the fabric of my family's existence in America, so far from the green isle my ancestors once called home.

Most isles are green. You know what they call people like you in Ireland? "Plastic Paddies". Look: he could be writing about you!

Irish immigrants sometimes faced hostility and discrimination in the nations they moved to - which only served to make their Irishness a more deeply-held thing. Irishness, and all that it entailed, became their heart in a heartless world, if you like.

But what the second, third, fourth, infinite-and-beyond generations of Irish are doing today is a different story. They are not excluded from society, except in their own fertile imaginations [...] Like angst-ridden teenagers, they just 'wanna be different!'. And like tantrum-throwing teenagers, they want you to 'recognise my difference!!'

What may or may not have happened to some of your ancestors two centuries ago, before Irish people were regarded as white, doesn't take away the white privilege you benefit from today.

We are a nation of people carrying the hidden wounds of generational trauma within our psyches, often unspoken, unrecognized, yet powerfully influencing the ways in which we weave the fabric of our lives today.

Pretending you're as oppressed as, say, teenagers from Red Lake, is unbelievably crass.

We are all the daughters and sons of our Mother the Earth. What we are suffering from, and what our ancestors suffered from, is patriarchy, a grotesque inflation of the powers of the Sky gods by white male culture.

I think you're suffering from a grotesquely inflated ego. Please don't make us suffer from it any more.

[Slow_Thunder]

TO RAVEN:
I've privately expressed my deep appreciation of your open-mindedness and balanced comments on this site, but I also want to do it publicly. I am very grateful that your voice is being heard, and honored to have met you, even under such difficult circumstances. Thank you.

I also want to respond to a couple of things you say in your commentary on this site.

You wrote;

The point here is, making money on teachings. Did the elder charge you money what she taught you?

****I'll answer this one privately, for reasons I've posted elsewhere.

You wrote:

I will not take away what happened to you . Yes it was a terrible experience you went through, however I myself know first hand the physical and emotional pain of being burned. I did not have any animal spirits come to me when it happened. ? Did it change me? You bet.
WalkingSoft knows me on a personal level. What I did with my experience is not start a web site as yours. Instead I did volunteer work at the burn units up in Chicago. Went in to talk to people that were going through the same kind of pain.

****I may never know why five bear spirits came to me as I was about to die in the fire, but they did. My efforts to use what happened to me to help others took a different from than yours did.

You also wrote:

Maybe what you went through was to help people, but it is the way that you are going about it that is not right. ? You are thinking with a white mind. I am not saying that in a racist way, what I am saying is go back to square one, stand back and see what you are doing. If you need to make a living don't use native teachings as your tool to do so.

****I do think with a white mind in some respects, because I was raised in, live in and have to deal with white culture on a daily basis. I do also have to support myself.
Regarding supporting myself by means other than teaching Native ways...first, I am not teaching Native American ways, exactly. I am teaching shamanic ways, and specifically women's shamanic ways. But I live on this land, this part of the earth, and I believe that if the earth and all She supports are to survive the assault of patriarchal culture, then that culture needs to be seeded with the wisdom of the Medicine Wheel ways, and that means teaching white people in a way that they can receive and integrate. Asking white people to pay for what I teach them is not a problem in white culture. If you take a long look at my web site, you'll see under "Native American Considerations" that I am trying to find a way to work with Native Americans on a basis that is culturally acceptable to them.
I own a large tract of land, and occasionally sell a lot. I am trying to protect the land from ? grotesque development in the future by attaching deeded restrictions and covenants on all lots I sell, regarding caring for the forest, etc.
I work very hard at all of these things, but do not make enough money at them at this point, to be able not to charge for my teaching or other services.

[Le Weaponnier]

TO EDUCATED INDIAN:

 While your arguments regarding the science of genetics are erudite and no doubt correct from a white male dominated patriarchal culture's scientific perspective, they are not only off the wall when it comes to understanding women's ways, they are just plain misguided.


Shame on you for disrespecting women

Shame on you for disrespecting men. You are being patronizing when you speak like that. And yes, I chose 'patronizing' deliberately.
You chose to put this into a male/female view. As if THAT should make any difference.
Are you saying that men are wrong?

As for "scientific perspective"? Are you saying that  men are dominating the scientific field?
You just disrespected women scientists by implying they are inferior.

Or is it the science that's wrong because it disagrees with you?

I notice you didn't challenge the points about the "genetic memory" concept being wrong.
Why not? Hoping that one would go away?

[PLH]

I don't believe I have ever posited that the Medicine Wheel is a white concept, and if I have, shame on me, because of course it's not, and I don't understand it as such"
....that is the point exactly, your idea of exploring the Medicine Wheel is blatant irreverence.
.
There is no such thing as NDN genetic memory; there is no reality behind being NDN in a former life, no princesses, no shamans, no self appointed medicine men or women, no self appointed Elders and no tooth fairy.

I went to the website you have listed in your profile here. How much more patronizing can you get? Native American Considerations... You are sensitive to the history of the tribes... Wow and you give reduced rates to Native Americans...How very condescending of you.

There is one thing here in this list that does still amaze me, there are people here than can chew you up and spit you out, yet they are allowing you to do it yourself.

Here's the real deal: People don't get to go through life causing harm, deliberately or not.

[Keguseno]

You guys may be right – perhaps there is no scientific basis for “genetic??? or racial memory.  And the idea could be used to claim legitimacy where none exists.  At the same time it is not uncommon to hear Elders speak about ancestral memory.  Are you saying they are wrong because western science says so?  What about the Grandfathers?  The spirits?  The Creator?  The power of a sacred bundle?  If we have no “science??? to prove they are real, does that make the old ones naïve or fraudulent?  The skeptic’s knife cuts both ways.  

If the goal of this site is to mock unscientific claims, then it has no claim to be a friend of traditional people.  The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend – as many have found out.  If the goal is to protect sacred traditions from exploitation, trivialization and downright appropriation (theft), then what does it matter whether you can measure it?  As I see it, the issue is not whether genetic memory (or chakras, the tooth fairy or anything else) really exist. The issue is that when you take a ceremony out of the land, language and culture where it came from, then, just like an organ cut from your body, it is no longer the same thing.  It is something else.  Plant it in the shadow of the age – narcissism, money-making, competition, short-term thinking, individualism, exploitation – and what was once medicine for the people becomes a bitter poison.  The challenge for those from outside the culture who have tasted the beauty of the medicine is not to imitate the ceremonial form that you see – it will turn to dust in your hand (as well as getting you held up to ridicule on the www).  The challenge is to imitate what you do not see – the profound relationships, commitments and responsibilities from which the ceremonies grew.  Won’t happen fast, but when and if it does, then that which has been lost might just return.

[Barnaby_McEwan]

You guys may be right – perhaps there is no scientific basis for “genetic??? or racial memory.  And the idea could be used to claim legitimacy where none exists.  At the same time it is not uncommon to hear Elders speak about ancestral memory.  Are you saying they are wrong because western science says so?

Hi there, Keguseno. Among 'alternative' therapists, ideas about 'genetic memory', the 'collective unconscious' and so on, go back to the original therapy guru Carl Jung, who developed the idea from various racialised biological theories prevalent among white-supremacists in nineteenth-century central Europe. Richard Noll's book, 'The Jung Cult' (Princeton University Press, 1995) is good on this. While not wishing to speak for them, I doubt Jung's racist fantasies and their modern equivalents have anything at all in common with what elders mean when they speak about ancestral memory.

[educatedindian]

Keguseno, I don't think ancestral memory and racial or genetic memory are the same. When elders speak of ancestral memeory they are speaking of traditions passed down orally, by longstanding tradition, with great care that nothing gets altered or distorted.

"Racial memory" is something straight out of pseudo-scientific racism. For one thing there's no such thing as "race". It's an invented social construct used to justify inequality. It has no place in Native cultures, or at least it should not. We speak of relatedness all the time, but it has no relation to skin color, the shape of our features, etc.

As far as genetic memory, well, I know some people like Trudell go on about memory being in the blood. As he himself often says, he may be crazy, but he's not incoherent. I'm not sure on what level he himself believes what he says.

Our goal is certainly not to mock unscientific claims. It's to expose and warn the public about exploiters who pose as peddlers of Native ways for a buck, and Scarlet Kinney certainly fits the bill. When they bring in pseudo-science and try to call it Native tradition, you better believe we'll point that out. And it's not from any love of western science that we do that.

[walking-soft]

Have been off line for a few days, just received a personal message from standing bear demanding I contact her immediatley for my statement on March 21. Sorry standing bear but I am unafraid to express my femine authority.

I did go to your sight and read your posting about this group. http://wwwthestandingbear.com/
stating you have been banned from this sight and that you received a personal email from debbieredbear, the moderator, stating that she was begining to believe you were sincere and was considering moving you to research needed.
Quite a right up.

Al has she been banned???

I have also picked up your bias oppinion toward men. Apparently you need healing there yourself. You have stated,"liberate themselves from patriarchal oppression, concepts.....". I am Cherokee and we are matriarchal. You haven't stolen our traditions, but what you have chosen to do is take a little of what you think are the traditions and made them into your own. Cherokees do not have shamans.

Why do you continue to brag about all your "credentials"? What a terrible,terrible experience you had to go through to be a shaman, well you chose that didn't you??

I have read all your sites and teachings, concerning this empowerment of women but from your postings about this group on your site it sounds like you are teaching how to be controlling, your views on the masculine is out of balance.

So I have one last question? Are you a woman or a man??  Or both?

[piya]

Yes, quite a write up about NAFPS on the
www.thestandingbear.com well worth taking a look at.

It invites her followers to take a look at us, then to write their opinions, to her which will be posted on her site (subject to her approval)

Thats great if they come and take a look at us, they will learn a lot.

Can't wait to read the opinions, she recieves, published on her site. (there isn't any as I write this)

Discounts for native women! sheeeeeeeeesh, !!!!!!!

Piya

[Barnaby_McEwan]

Yes, quite a write up about NAFPS on the
www.thestandingbear.com well worth taking a look at.

From the site: '... a group of Native Americans...'.

We're not all Indians here, Scarlet. But never mind incovenient facts! If we're motivated by anti-white racism then we all have to be bitter Indians, right?

Scarlet's minions, before posting don't forget to check out our newagespeak/plain English dictionary. it might you save a lot of time.

Later: it doesn't look to me like Scarlet's banned, though perhaps banned user IDs still show up on this site. Hers is still visible as I write. Looks like it was registered the day before she first posted as a guest.

[piya]

I have a suggestion for backgroundd music for their website after reading "lynxwoman" (and yes, Al, we have Lynxes up here on the Olympic Peninsula but I bet LW would not wish to meet one). I can't remember the name of the group but it starts out: "Money money money MONNNEEEY!" LOL!

Debbie, Its was a group from Annika's country, Sweden called Abba, heres the wording

I work all night, I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay
Ain’t it sad
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me
That’s too bad
In my dreams I have a plan
If I got me a wealthy man
I wouldn’t have to work at all, I’d fool around and have a ball...

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man’s world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man’s world
Aha-ahaaa
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It’s a rich man’s world

A man like that is hard to find but I can’t get him off my mind
Ain’t it sad
And if he happens to be free I bet he wouldn’t fancy me
That’s too bad
So I must leave, I’ll have to go
To las vegas or monaco
And win a fortune in a game, my life will never be the same...

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man’s world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man’s world
Aha-ahaaa
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It’s a rich man’s world

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man’s world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man’s world
Aha-ahaaa
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It’s a rich man’s world

It’s a rich man’s world