Prophecies of cooperation with New Agers?

[AndreasWinsnes]

Are there actually Hopi, Maya or Sioux prophecies that can be interpreted as cooperation with Harnerists and other New Agers is in line with Native American traditions? I guess not, but I wonder, because I just read the book ???Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary???. The author, Dr. Robert Wallis, wrote the following:

"... the situation is complicated when certain teachings are understood by some (including Native Americans) to accommodate non-natives. A prime example is Lakota (Oglala Sioux) elder Black Elk's sacred vision of Buffalo Calf Woman who brought the sacred pipe to the tribes ... There is, however, conflict over the interpretation of Buffalo Calf Woman's words: "I bring this pipe for all the common people???; do they mean the pipe is for Lakota people only, as native critics of neo-Shamanisms argue, or might they refer to all people, as native teachers of non-native suggests? Lakota opinion is divided: Frank Fool's Crow, late ceremonial chief of the Teton Sioux said that the sacred pipe is "the key to the world's survival today ... words echoed by Joseph Chasing Horse and other Lakota elders who are friendly to neo-Shamanisms. But recently Lakota tribal statute stated that no aspects of Teton Sioux religion be used or taught to non-natives ...???

What do you think about this in particular and Wallis' book in general? Is it possible to refute the opinion of Frank Fool's Crow and the others in such a way that every person with a common sense should understand that Native American traditions are not for everyone?

Off topic: In NAFPS' guestbook I used the word "shamans", but what I meant was Harnerists. Is it possible to edit the guestbook?

[educatedindian]

The way Wallis talks about conflict gives a false impression, as though Lakota and other NDNs are split down the middle "so don't worry about Native critics, dear Nuagers and pagans." What he fails to mention was the margin the tribal vote barring ceremonies to outsiders won by, more than 95% in favor.
Also, Black Elk was no traditional elder, he was a Catholic convert, had been for most of his life. And Fools Crow not only changed his opinion about teaching outsiders, he signed tribal resolutions vs exploiters.

I haven't read Wallis's book. He is himself a British pagan and academic who, best I can tell from his reviews, seems to be spend most of his career defending Nuage and esp pagan beliefs and practices, minimizing the huge problems and damage they often do.

The way Native prophecies get twisted and mangled beyond recognition is so much of a problem I'm planning on devoting a whole chapter of it in the book version of NAFPS. Prophecies almost by nature can be interpreted and misinterpreted. For those raised in Christian cultures, the best example would be how the Book of Revelations, an allegorical description of the persecutions Christians were enduring in the first century under the Romans, gets twisted into a prophecy of End Times.

Lots of Native prophecies urge whites to change their ways if humanity is to survive, treat the earth better, think about their communities before their pocketbook, etc. Most Natives would say the problem with Nuagers is that they really haven't changed at all. They've just taken the prophecies and twisted them into a newer form of colonialism and exploitation.

[Barnaby_McEwan]

What do you think about this in particular and Wallis' book in general? Is it possible to refute the opinion of Frank Fool's Crow and the others...

I haven't read that book. As far as I know the only written sources of Black Elk's and Fools Crow's (Black Elk's nephew) alleged opinions are books written by white people: John Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks and two books on Fools Crow by Thomas Mails.

George Tinker:

Mails himself reports a conversation with Fools Crow about John Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks. As Mails reads from the book to Fools Crow, the latter responded, "Who is this man you are reading about?... that is not my uncle". Mails should have learned something from the encounter. Mails's volume is not Fools Crow. Many have suggested that Black Elk Speaks should have better been titled Neihardt Speaks. So Fools Crow: Wisdom and Power might have been more honestly titled Thomas Mails: Wisdom and Power - and then left to the reader to decide whether Mails's wisdom and power were authentic or not. [...]

Given that Mails is not proficient in Lakota and that Fools Crow spoke only a minimal english - especially with Mails - the dialogue Mails reports between them is entirely too sophisticated, not to say entirely too euro-western. Even with the presence of a translator, I would argue, the liguistic problems are insurmountable. Indeed it becomes clear in reading the narrative that the dialogue is almost entirely an artistic creation of the author. Mails himself gives the reader a clue when he speaks of "assembling" Fools Crow's thoughts, and he actually admits, "So then, this book - even when quotation marks are used - is seldom precisely what Fools Crow said, but rather what I helped him say."

(p. 76)

If Wallis is citing these books, and it appears he at least cites Neihardt, then it doesn't say much for his scholarship.

Armin Geertz's book The Invention of Prophecy: Continuity and Meaning in Hopi Indian Religion has an extended treatment of interaction with and often-damaging effects on Hopi society of the Hippie-Sinom ('hippie people').

[plz]

Also, Black Elk was no traditional elder, he was a Catholic convert, had been for most of his life. And Fools Crow not only changed his opinion about teaching outsiders, he signed tribal resolutions vs exploiters.

EI,
I tried to PM you, but messg said I needed to make one post first...

Ed McGaa took me to Frank Fools Crow in July of '89 and? I could tell he was NOT happy with the situation. ?  ? The look he gave Ed and myself said it all. ? IMO. ?  I was still too 'hot' for Ed to get it, ? then... ? but from a personal perspective, ? I can avow that Fools Crow did not approve of what McGaa was up to.

[AndreasWinsnes]

Thanks for the replies. Wallis' book is a revised version of his PhD thesis, and he fails to mention that Black Elk was a Catholic, that 95 percent supported the ban of new agers, and that Fool's Crow changed his opinion! I am doing research, so I will really appreciate it if you can give the background sources for this information, or let me know where I can find it. I think I will try to find Wallis' e-mail address and kindly ask for a comment.  

[Barnaby_McEwan]

A couple of pages on Wallis at the American International University in London:

http://www.richmond.ac.uk/newsletter0804/robert_wallis.html

http://www.richmond.ac.uk/content/academic-programs/ma-in-art-history.aspx

[educatedindian]

Trish's site has an article about the referendum in archives. About Black Elk:
http://moses.creighton.edu/CSRS/news/F93-3.html
Black Elk, Catholic Catechist: The Rest of the Story
A review of Michael F. Steltenkamp, Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala (Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993). 209 PP
Reviewed by Dennis Hamm, S.J.
Professor of Theology
....Curiously missing from this portrait is the latter and longer part of his life-the fifty years lived in the 20th century, including his conversion to Christianity in 1904 and his long and productive career as a Catholic catechist.
Anthropologist Raymond DeMallie filled in the gap partially in 1984, when he published The Sixth Grandfather, an edition of the original field notes from which Neihardt wrote his book. DeMallie introduced that material with a lengthy discussion of Neihardt's transmutation of Black Elk's statements along with some reflections on the medicine man's conversion and career as a catechist. Even in this book, the focus remained the old days of Black Elk's 19th-century career. No one had yet told the full story of the person the people on the Pine Ridge reservation remember best, Nick Black Elk, Catholic catechist, man of song, humor, great speeches, boundless energy, and lay leader responsible for some 400 conversions. Jesuit anthropologist Michael Steltenkamp has finally told that story. Using as his primary source the reminiscences of the holy man's only daughter, Lucy (Black Elk) Looks Twice, supplemented by interviews with other eye-witnesses, Steltenkamp tells the story of Nick Black Elk, the catechist. The author quotes one of his former teachers, Joseph Epes Brown himself, as warrant for this work: "I have felt it improper that this phase of his life was never presented either by Neihardt or indeed by myself. I suppose somehow it was thought this Christian participation compromised his 'Indianness,' but I do not see it this way and think it time that the record was set straight....
Black Elk's Christian conversion was occasioned in part by an abrupt confrontation with a local Jesuit priest who interrupted his Lakota ritual at the bedside of a dying child. Out of this collision of cultures, which Steltenkamp finds in some ways embarrassing to relate (but Lucy finds funny), came a relationship that Black Elk could understand as providential.
The same zest for learning and adventure that led a young Black Elk to join the Buffalo Bill show on its European tours led him to quiz the Pine Ridge Jesuits constantly about the story of Jesus and the church. This active adult learner became one of the busiest and most successful native catechists on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
In his catechetical work, Black Elk used a currently popular visual aid called the Two Roads Map featuring a pre-Christian black road and a Christian red road. Steltenkamp makes a fascinating case that some of the vision imagery that Neihardt transmitted regarding black and red roads may have been Black Elk's retrospective blending of conventional Lakota symbolism with his own (by then, three-decade) experience of the Two Roads Map.
The book is full of such fresh angles on an American figure whose image had grown increasingly familiar. Steltenkamp shows us how incomplete and even inaccurate that received image was. What emerges is a down-to-earth, yet inspiring portrait of a Native American who had embraced Christianity as the full revelation of the Wakan Tanka (Lakota for God) he had begun to know as an Oglala holy man. His practice of the Catholic faith was not (as some would have it) a regrettable caving in to Euro-American subjugation but a joyful extension of his life-long quest to find and serve the Great Spirit."

[AndreasWinsnes]

I got the following reply from Robert J. Wallis. It seems nuanced and accurate.


"You ask me to respont to Carroll's statement on my work, and I apologise for sounding defensive but I am concerned when someone states "I haven't read that book" and then proceeds to make an unfounded critical and offhand statement about it. This is something I see often (not only in relation to my own work, but elsewhere too), especially on the internet where people seem to be more blasse about making off-the-cuff, critical remarks. Perhaps its because they don't know how to fight fair and also the internet avoids seeing "the white's of their eyes"!

Carroll goes onto state, regarding my citing of Neihardt that "it doesn't say much for his scholarship". Sound scholarship, in my view, requires diligent research. Had Carroll been diligent enough to read my book and the way in which I cite Neihardt, then he would know that my work is by no means uncritical of neo-shamans.Indeed, in place of trite remarks, my book theorises, problematises and critcally engages with the topic.

Carroll also suggests I read Armin Geertz's book. Again, had he read my book, he would know that I refer often to this among other of Armin's works on the new age and neo-shamans.

After looking at my Richmond University biog, Carroll states that he (i.e. me) "is himself a British pagan and academic who ... seems to spend most of his career defending Nuage and esp pagan beliefs and practices, minimizing the huge problems and damage they often do". How he can come to that conclusion without reading any of my work is surprising. Especially since, if he knew my work, would understand this is a gross misrepresentation of what I actually say.

I am indeed a pagan and an academic. That I am a pagan and academic does not remove a critical faculty from my scholarly work (this is something anthropologists and scholars of religion have been discussing for some time - see e.g. 'Researching Paganisms' published by AltaMira). In my book 'Shamans/neoShamans' I crticically engage with a range of New Age, neo-shamanic and pagan discourses, with especially harsh words for those Westerners who refuse to listen to Native (American and other) voices which call for an end to appropriation. Indeed, I use the term neo-colonialism for such cultural theft. Regarding Neihardt, Fools Crow and the other comments on Lakota: I am in agreement with what is said on the website and am grateful to hear of these developments. I would point out that my book only briefly gets involved in this issue since I focus on the Pueblos of the Southwest. This research, indeed, would strengthen Carroll's argument (i.e. I cite Pueblo voices critiquing neo-shamans). But I am not out to lambast new age, neo-shamans and others...

The situation is by no means simple and I make the point in that book and elsewhere that it is all too easy to dismiss neo-shamans in an off-the-cuff way as neo-colonialist. I offer a number of examples where pagans in particular take a more nuanced approach to shamanic practices and have answered Native voices by looking to their own European traditions rather than to (other) indigenous ones. This raises other problems that I also discuss... My interest in this area (contemporary paganism and the past) is one reason behind our 'Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights Project' (www.sacredsites.org.uk) examining contemporary pagan engagments with the past - not only to critique negative engagements (graffitti, inappropriate offerings, fire damage, etc) but also to point to more positive instances - such as fruitful relationships between pagans and heritage managers in Britain.

I would be happy to engage in further dialogue on this subject but not if it involves a misrepresentation of my work. I would be happy for you to post my comments on the "New Age Fraud..." site if that opens up constructive discussion."

[Barnaby_McEwan]

I got the following reply from Robert J. Wallis. It seems nuanced and accurate.

Wallis: "You ask me to respont to Carroll's statement on my work, and I apologise for sounding defensive but I am concerned when someone states "I haven't read that book" and then proceeds to make an unfounded critical and offhand statement about it. [...] Carroll goes onto state, regarding my citing of Neihardt that "it doesn't say much for his scholarship". Sound scholarship, in my view, requires diligent research.

Indeed it does: ironically Wallis appears unable to distinguish between my posts and Al's.

[JosephSWM]

I'll tell ya this, anything Thomas Mails writes is through his very christian eyes. Have you ever read his book "Spiritual Pathways". That one is a real hoot. His coffee table book about my people, the Cherokee, makes a great door stop and seconds as a table leg leveler.

Joseph

[AndreasWinsnes]

Indeed it does: ironically Wallis appears unable to distinguish between my posts and Al's

Ha ha! Nice, but a mistake like that can happen to everyone. It has happend to me, so I will not judge others

What's more important is that Wallis writes:

Regarding Neihardt, Fools Crow and the other comments on Lakota: I am in agreement with what is said on the website and am grateful to hear of these developments.

This is a sign of true scholarship. A true scientist is always willing to correct his own statements. A scientific book is usually part of a slow dialogue process with other scientists and the like, and not a finished product with all the correct answers. It usually takes many people and lots of debates to discover what is true and what is not. A forum like this can be helpful in that regard.

[Barnaby_McEwan]

Indeed it does: ironically Wallis appears unable to distinguish between my posts and Al's

Ha ha! Nice, but a mistake like that can happen to everyone. It has happend to me, so I will not judge others

Wallis is in academia: you (I guess) aren't, at least not in this field. Different standards apply.

What's more important is that Wallis writes:

Regarding Neihardt, Fools Crow and the other comments on Lakota: I am in agreement with what is said on the website and am grateful to hear of these developments.

This is a sign of true scholarship. A true scientist is always willing to correct his own statements. A scientific book is usually part of a slow dialogue process with other scientists and the like, and not a finished product with all the correct answers. It usually takes many people and lots of debates to discover what is true and what is not. A forum like this can be helpful in that regard.

If he'd asked some Lakotas he would have heard of these developments before his thesis was published. It appears from your quotation of it that Wallis cited Mails uncritically to back up his belief that "Lakota opinion is divided" over whether non-Natives should be included in their ceremonies (when actually it is nearly unanimous), falsely giving the impression that opinion is equally split on this issue in Lakota communities.

Wallis takes Al, that is me, to task for not knowing "the way I cite Neihardt", though I was talking mainly about his citing of Mails' book on Fools Crow. He doesn't offer any reason for me to think it less likely that he cited both Neihardt and Mails uncritically. Perhaps I'll have to eat my words when I've read the book, but it seems to me that he didn't think to check his sources by, oh I don't know, asking some Indians about them.

In another irony, the blurb for Wallis' book states

He makes it clear that scholars must be prepared to give up some of their hold over knowledge...

[Barnaby_McEwan]

I'll tell ya this, anything Thomas Mails writes is through his very christian eyes. Have you ever read his book "Spiritual Pathways". That one is a real hoot. His coffee table book about my people, the Cherokee, makes a great door stop and seconds as a table leg leveler.

Joseph

Do you mean this one? Looks like it's been reissued recently.

[Chutwood]

Are there actually Hopi, Maya or Sioux prophecies that can be interpreted as cooperation with Harnerists and other New Agers is in line with Native American traditions? I guess not, but I wonder, because I just read the book ???Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary???. The author, Dr. Robert Wallis, wrote the following:

Off topic: In NAFPS' guestbook I used the word "shamans", but what I meant was Harnerists. Is it possible to edit the guestbook?

I'm a bit confused.  From your last statement, it appears that you recognize that there is no such thing as a 'shaman'.  If that is true, then I'm somewhat surprised that you would be using a book about 'shamans' as a serious reference for anything?

Storm

[AndreasWinsnes]

I'm a bit confused.  From your last statement, it appears that you recognize that there is no such thing as a 'shaman'.  If that is true, then I'm somewhat surprised that you would be using a book about 'shamans' as a serious reference for anything?

I don't use Wallis' book uncritically, and I only said that his revision was a sign of sound scholarship. But every book contains some true facts, and I think a PhD thesis is more accurate in many instances than plain New Age books. I have, however, seen too many mistakes done by Western scholars to trust them without doing my own research.

Wallis is in academia: you (I guess) aren't, at least not in this field. Different standards apply.

Happy to hear that I don't sound like a scholar. I don't want a job in academia, at least not now, but I have just finished writing a PhD thesis in moral philosophy and philosophy of law, and have delivered it to the University of Tromso, Norway. Scholars also makes mistakes, but he should have checked his sources better in this case.