NAFPS Forum

My mother mentioned that she once met a medicine man in North Dakota named Rolling Thunder. I later read a chapter devoted to plastic shamanism and New Age fakes and Rolling Thunder, along with others were listed as being frauds or profiteers. Interestingly enough, Rolling Thunder was also featured in the awful movie Billy Jack. There also seems to be a dispute between Rolling Thunder's family and his widow who married him at a bad point in his life before he passed away. Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone here can say if this Rolling Thunder guy is a sincere medicine man or not.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1574160265/ref=cm_rdp_product

Never mind, a little research on this site has brought me to the conclusion that he was a fraud. I still wonder if it was the same Rolling Thunder my mother met.

Quote from: BadCrow on November 19, 2009, 01:46:01 PM
Never mind, a little research on this site has brought me to the conclusion that he was a fraud. I still wonder if it was the same Rolling Thunder my mother met.

Rolling Thunder is on the offender list
http://nuagetricksters.bravehost.com/offenders2005.html

For those interested in "Rolling Thunder" I noted that quite a lot of the posts in this thread are about him:

http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=5553.0 [Robert Russell Cayc Jones AKA Sidian Jones AKA Morning Star]

See also: https://www.facebook.com/VoiceOfRollingThunder

QuoteOfficial page for Rolling Thunder, managed by his grandson Sidian Jones. RT was an inter-tribal medicine man/shaman/teacher. Order the book today ...

This is the book: https://www.amazon.com/The-Voice-Rolling-Thunder-Medicine/dp/1591431336/

This Wikipedia article explains his background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Thunder_(person).

QuoteRolling Thunder (birth name: John Walter Pope, 1916–1997) was a hippie spiritual leader who self-identified as a Native American medicine man. [...] He has been considered an example of a plastic medicine man.

Controversy
Rolling Thunder's given name was John Pope, not Rolling Thunder. Rolling Thunder appears in taped interviews with John Trudell and Michael Chosa in which he describes the contemporary treatment of Native Americans. At times he claimed to be part Cherokee, at other times Hopi, and at other times Shoshone and that he could represent the Western Shoshone Nation. He never provided proof of any Native heritage, nor have any Native people claimed him. He has been cited as an example of a plastic medicine man. Rolling Thunder is mentioned in a number of books on the New Age, 1960's counterculture, cultural appropriation, cultural imperialism, and neoshamanism.