NAFPS Forum

I received an inquiry on these folks.

http://www.medicinepinehealing.ca/

Quote"Medicine Pine Healing is the inspirational wellness work of Shannon Parsons and Tim Yearington. All our services are rooted in the medicine of traditional native teachings."

http://www.medicinepinehealing.ca/traditional-guidance

QuoteCome sit with us, enjoy a nice cup of pine needle tea and receive guidance and counselling from a traditional Native perspective.

QuoteTraditional guidance sessions are 2 hours in length $120.

http://www.medicinepinehealing.ca/guided-medicine-walks

QuoteMedicine walks are $140 per person. Contact us to learn more.


Medicine Walks and our "Way of the Medicine Pine" course both provide traditional teachings to prepare you for doing a vision quest. At a sacred site called Thunderbird Mountain we help people to do personal vision quests. We do not charge for vision quests.

http://www.medicinepinehealing.ca/5-week-course

QuoteWay of the Medicine Pine is a five week personal empowerment course rooted in the power of native spiritual knowledge from the Medicine Wheel teachings to the Thunderbird. This enlightening and interactive course is taught through teachings and interactive sharing circles. $400/person.
50% deposit required upon registration.

Both were adopted and didn't know their heritage growing up. Parsons says she is Eastern Band Cherokee. Yearington says Mohawk and Algonkin. Parsons says she learned from three professors. But I think it's likely she just learned general history and culture and maybe other sources of learning. Yearington says his learning came from an unnamed Anishnaabe elder from Magnetowa. Here's his site. He has workshops that he's given mostly for schools, churches, and NDN gatherings.
http://www.timyearington.com/clients.htm

Both of them call themselves Metis. Yearington also has what he says is a teaching of the 7th Fire. The version he presents seems different from the version I've read before, which gives a warning against newcomers, to judge them only by their actions and not their words. This version says to welcome them in, even invite them.

Yearington has a 5 week personal empowerment course for $400. Parsons does bodywork for 80 an hour, including qigong, reiki, and hot stone massage.

QuoteMedicine walks are $140 per person. Contact us to learn more.

youch! That's spendy. Is it just for learning plants, or nuage babble, or?

Whether or not Shannon Parsons and Tim Yearington have a bit of distant heritage, it looks like the usual pan-Indian misinformation peddled by nuagers. I don't see any hint of authenticity or cultural connection.

They claim to be teaching 'an ancient, all-encompassing "Aboriginal Wisdom System." ("The acronym we use for this is AWSYM, pronounced "awesome", because it is! It is a power tool.')[sic] As in, throw it all in a blender, mix fragments of misunderstood ceremonies all together and sell it.

Tim Yearington is teaching nuage, pan-NDN/Lakota-lite "medicine wheel" workshops, that have nothing to do with the cultures they claim, and that are inappropriate for the territory where they live. http://www.medicinepinehealing.ca/medicine-wheel-ways

For them to ask people for $120 to have tea with them, and call this "traditional Native guidance" seem grandiose and exploitative. As they imply they are doing healing for people in these sessions, I'd say this falls under selling ceremony, even if they don't know any real ones to sell.