NAFPS Forum

The other day I found a book published by Llewellyn in 1989 called 'Birth of a Modern Shaman', by Cynthia Bend and Tayja Wiger.

According to the book Bend is, or was, a human-potential movement therapist. Wiger is, or was, a woman with Lakota ancestry who had a hellish time growing up, but after encountering new-age healers, including Bend, was healed of blindness and her supposed multiple-personality disorder. Then the newagers showed her how to become a shaman.

The only references I can find to her on the web are references to this book. There are no references at all on the web to the forthcoming volume 'The Maturs Zone' advertised in it.

When I think about how this sensational book was published about Wiger, and then...nothing, I get an awful creepy feeling that these therapists didn't heal her at all but tried to make a vulnerable Indian woman into something she wasn't, and then dumped her when she stopped co-operating. I suspect there's a tragic sequel to this book which needs to be told, so if anyone knows what happened...

Like you I couldn't find anything else on Wiger except for book listings. I did notice the book was co written by Serge Kahili King, a white guy who exploits Hawaiian beliefs.

Bend is a graduate of Carleton College, class of '47.
http://www.collegebookstore.org/carleton/books/alumni/individual.asp?AuthorID=26

She calls herself "Water Spirit Woman" and endorses Ed McGaa.
http://www.harpercollins.com.au/title.cfm?ISBN=0062505963&Author=0020948

Someone used that ID on an MSN group called American Indian Movement Friends, but we can't be sure it's the same person.

I'm also asking around on an anti cult group and will let you know.

I met her a few times. She was a foster child raised in a non NDN home. She found her identity through New Age shamanism. She is not greedy or dominating like some. Her spirituality is New Age with some pan Indian stuff thrown in. Other than the usual New Age gobbledegook she's ok as a person but lacks NDN authenticity. 

First off let me introduce myself. I'm a nurse and an anthropologist. Tayja Wiger lived with me for two years in 1991-1993. I witnessed her work with people on numerous occasions. To my knowledge she was Oglala Soiux. She and 5 other adults with serious mental health challenges had been rehabilitated in the home of a gifted artist. Tayja herself was one of the most gifted spiritual leaders whom  I ever had the pleasure of working with. Like many Shaman there is a fine line between genius and madness. Tayja walked that line very carefully. She was indeed a true Shaman in that she had a gift of deep intuition and spirituality. She did not profess to be anything other than that. She used her drum and led healing services. I never knew her to take money for any indigenous practice. She walked in integrity, humility, and was deeply spiritual. After she left my home she became ill and lived for a number of years in a long term care facility in Oklahoma. As far as I know she is now living in St. Paul Minnesota. Dr. Eileen Jackson, PhD, RN.

Quote from: irishblueileen on December 23, 2011, 01:08:44 AM
First off let me introduce myself. I'm a nurse and an anthropologist. Tayja Wiger lived with me for two years in 1991-1993. I witnessed her work with people on numerous occasions. To my knowledge she was Oglala Soiux. She and 5 other adults with serious mental health challenges had been rehabilitated in the home of a gifted artist. Tayja herself was one of the most gifted spiritual leaders whom  I ever had the pleasure of working with. Like many Shaman there is a fine line between genius and madness. Tayja walked that line very carefully. She was indeed a true Shaman in that she had a gift of deep intuition and spirituality. She did not profess to be anything other than that.  She used her drum and led healing services. I never knew her to take money for any indigenous practice. She walked in integrity, humility, and was deeply spiritual. After she left my home she became ill and lived for a number of years in a long term care facility in Oklahoma. As far as I know she is now living in St. Paul Minnesota. Dr. Eileen Jackson, PhD, RN.

Thanks for the information. If you read what was said earlier, the concern was not so much her as whether she was being exploited herself by Llewellyn and other outsiders. You noted yourself she had mental health problems. Such a case would present ethical challenges for even the most well intended researcher. And Llewellyn are nothing of the kind. They sell flashy exploitative knockoffs or misrepresentations of many traditions, and are in fact own and run by fundamentalists who care nothing about what they sell.

Do you know anything about her relationship with her publisher and the co author of "her" book?

Can you explain a little more about your words that I bolded? If she called herself a "shaman" then she's hardly traditional Lakota, though as we've all said the ethical fault lies with others.

This thread is very interesting to me, largely because of the claims that Wiger suffered from "multiple personality disorder" - a highly controversial and to many professionals, discredited, diagnostic category that is very often associated with claims of "recovered memories" of prolonged sexual abuse including "satanic abuse".  Nowadays the people who are "believers" in the disorder (usually also believers in conspiracy theories involving widespread satanic abuse) refer to the disorder as Dissociative  Identity Disorder aka DID.

In my experience of meeting many people who claim to have DID and / or to have been victims of prolonged childhood satanic abuse, it is fairly clear to me that most if not all of these people have been abused by manipulative and even criminal psychotherapists who have planted false memories of such abuse and who also encourage their victims to manifest "alters" (different split off personalities).   Some people self diagnose with DID and / or a history of prolonged sadistic sexual / satanic abuse having read the notorious book "The Courage to Heal" or some other irrational tome that advises readers that any one of a number of commonly experienced illnesses and emotional problems are indicators of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse.  People in this latter category tend to shop around for therapists until they find one who is enthusiastic about "recovered memory" therapy.

I am especially interested in this phenomena as there is a crossover category of dodgy psychotherapists involved with pseudo-tantric cults whose activities involve trafficking in human beings (THB) and dodgy psychotherapists who promote conspiracy theories regarding DID and widespread satanic abuse of children.

It is ironic that some psychotherapists who claim to be authorities on ritual abuse and dissociative states resulting from prolonged trauma are themselves involved with criminals whose activities include ritual abuses of children and adults.

The implications of this situation should victims of real ritual abuse be referred to these dodgy (and possibly criminal) therapists does not bear thinking about.

Anyway, I digress...

It is unsurprising to me that a vulnerable woman might be exploited and abused by a "counsellor" who claims to be a shaman and who advocates the diagnostic category of DID.

IME there are very clear links between some plastic shamans, some "psychotherapists" who are involved with pseudo-tantric criminal networks and some psychotherapists who promote the existence of DID and organised satanic abuse.

I am still studying this situation and the relationships between the "therapists" and "shamans" concerned and it it I think quite sensitive information and it will be a while before I post any details on NAFPS if at all, however i do want people to know that there is a link between these apparently disparate categories.

Now, as for Ms Wiger's "counselor"  Cynthia Davidson Bend,  her personal website is here

http://www.cynthiabend.dgi.bz

You can see a photo of her on the website and she is clearly a very elderly person.

According to the website:

QuoteAbout Cynthia Davidson Bend

Family
Cynthia Bend lives with her husband, Meredith, in the house in rural Afton, Minnesota, which they began designing and building in 1949. Six generations of Cynthia's family have lived in the St. Croix Valley. Now their sons, Richard and Harold, live nearby with their families. Their daughter, Katie, her husband and eleven-year-old daughter live on the family land where Katie teaches horseback riding.

Education and Teaching
After receiving a BA in English from Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, then an M.A. in human development from St. Mary's University in Winona, Minnesota, Cynthia taught creative writing to senior college students at Minnesota Metropolitan State University in St. Paul.

Her teaching experience is broad and varied, including animals as well as people of all ages. She has bred and trained dogs in obedience and retrieving, then schooled horses as well as pursuing an interest in wild-animal behavior. She taught horseback riding and dog training to 4-H members, swimming to people from toddlers to senior college students and art to preschoolers. She has worked as a counselor combining traditional with non-traditional techniques.

Special Education
At The School For Social Development in Minneapolis, (now Partnership Resources) Cynthia worked with severely disabled cerebral palsied students as a therapeutic teacher.

After training with Carol Ann Liaros, the psychic teacher who established Project Blind Awareness, Inc. , Cynthia taught psychic techniques for orientation to blind students including her future Native American collaborator, Tayja Wiger.

Publications
In addition to articles on working stock dogs, dog training and short stories, Cynthia Bend has published a biography and three novels:

Birth of a Modern Shaman, Llewellyn Publications is co-authored with Tayja Wiger. This biography is an outcome of Cynthia's teaching experience with Project Blind Awareness.

Arthur's Room, Beaver's Pond Press, is an intimate story of experiences taken from the lives of young adults living with cerebral palsy including Cynthia's brother-in-law and her special students.

Burning Clean, Ytterli Press, is compiled from short stories, some of which are the result of co-teaching Sioux spirituality workshops with Ed McGaa, the Dakota Sioux author of Mother Earth Spirituality. Cynthia has also been a student of the Choctaw-Seneca author, Jamie Sams, who co-authored Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power through the Ways of Animals. Find out what happens when Cynthia's unusual group of characters meet around a bonfire.

Billy's Goat, Ytterli Press, is a novel for young readers and adults, based on adventures with unusual family pets.

I cannot find any mention of any qualifications in counselling, psychotherapy or mental health in Bend's biographical account.


The reviews of her book co-authored with Wiger are interesting

QuoteBirth of a Modern Shaman

"I have long believed that we create our own reality. This is perhaps more true in healing than in all other aspects of our lives. I concur with the authors that true healing occurs when anger and fear are truly resolved. Individuals can program a positive, loving reality. This kind of story should give hope to all those still seeking healing."
- C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D.
Pain Game

"This is truly one of the most comprehensive case studies I have ever seen covering such an all encompassing series of events leading to resolution. We hear healers state that it is love that heals; yet it is so difficult for many to release the fear and anger that lodge in the subconscious mind in order to be able to accept that love. This is a story of one person's journey on that path."
- Boris J. Bagdassarroff, Ph.D.
Hypnotherapist at the Beverly Hills Institute for Self-Improvement

"Tayja's story fascinates not only because of the horror of her victimization and the beauty of her eventual transformation but also because of the testimony to an ancestral Native American imagination that anchored her in a derelict world. This book is as much a tribute to a psyche that willed survival as it is a tribute to nontraditional teachers and psychologists along the way who were willing to follow the path of Tayja. Her journey unnervingly demonstrates the old truth that the cure for the wound is in the wound itself."
- Nor Hall, Ph.D. Jungian Psychotherapist
The Moon and the Virgin: Reflections on the Archetypal Feminine

I googled for the hypnotherapist Boris J. Bagdassarroff who endorses the book and I found his FP page here
http://www.facebook.com/bbagdassarroff?sk=friends&v=friends

He only has 86 friends that include a few newagers and I did notice that among his friends is Tara Sutphen
http://www.facebook.com/tarasutphen
who has her own NAFPS thread here
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=745.0

I also noticed that he appeared on a radio show in 2007 described as follows:

Nov 29, 2007   

Dr. Boris Bagdassarroff
PhD in Human Behavior, metaphysics,  spiritual thought. past life regression.
source:  (scroll down)
http://www.sandishore.com/radio.html


So the book is endorsed by a hypnotherapist who specialises in past life regression.  Okaaaay


Next i checked out C Norman Shealy

His FB page is here and his friends list is chock full of newagers, including the fraud C Mikkal Smith
http://www.facebook.com/NormShealy?sk=info

his websites are here
http://www.normshealy.com
http://www.holosinstitutesofhealth.com/

He is a promoter of newage and holistic medicine with a special interest in reincarnation and "energy medicine". A google search for "Norman Shealy" and "Quack" tuns up over 16,000  results.

Next I had a look at Nor Hall, she appears to be a Jungian therapist who has written extensively on the Goddess, initiation, femininity and other usual Jungian subjects. I do not have time to research her thoroughly at this point but I can imagine how a Jungian who is enthusiastic about the "divine feminine" and naive about newage frauds could be taken in by a fake book such as this one.


Back to Wiger..

I do not have sufficient data to be able to comment on this particular case but I do feel concerned for Ms Wiger's welfare and I share the concerns of others here that there is a possibility that she is / has been exploited by others. 

I would be very interested to learn more about this if anyone has further information. 

I knew someone w/multiple personalities. No doctor planted this in her, no false memories. But, a lot of lacking memories due to her not having any memory of the time frames wherein she was of a different personality. Interestingly, she refused to believe this and stated she was being "possessed" by her spirit guides, hence the different names and personalities that she would exhibit when she was 'gone'. 

Quote from: nemesis on January 03, 2012, 12:40:28 PM
Now, as for Ms Wiger's "counselor"  Cynthia Davidson Bend,  her personal website is here

http://www.cynthiabend.dgi.bz

You can see a photo of her on the website and she is clearly a very elderly person.

According to the website:

Quote
About Cynthia Davidson Bend
Burning Clean, Ytterli Press, is compiled from short stories, some of which are the result of co-teaching Sioux spirituality workshops with Ed McGaa, the Dakota Sioux author of Mother Earth Spirituality. Cynthia has also been a student of the Choctaw-Seneca author, Jamie Sams, who co-authored Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power through the Ways of Animals. Find out what happens when Cynthia's unusual group of characters meet around a bonfire.

Well well. We already have threads on these frauds.