Exposing the fake medicine men and women
Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji 11/7/2005
© 2005, Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc
In the early 1990's I asked my staff writer at Indian Country Today,
Avis Little Eagle, to write an investigative series on fake medicine men
and women. She tackled what turned out to be a 10-part series with
trepidation.
It seemed that everywhere we turned in those days, there was another
catalog or news story featuring medicine men and women of dubious
distinction. An eerie similarity arose in the backgrounds of many of
these would be healers and spiritualists.
So many of these new age shaman made similar claims. They had been
adopted by a medicine man (it was always a man and he was usually Lakota
or Cherokee). They had learned all of the centuries old methods of
healing and ministering by these traditional teachers and when they felt
they were ready, they set out on their own to spread the good news of
Indian medicine and healing.
In the many catalogs where their ads were placed most had assumed names
they presumed to be Native American (Blue Dove, Swift Deer, etc.) and
set up shop. They developed a system of monetary charges for sweat lodge
ceremonies, vision quests and so on. Of course, every true Lakota and
Cherokee knows that there are no charges for the services of the
medicine people.
Most of the new age shaman were not Indian at all. When questioned about
their roots by Little Eagle they became angry and defensive. Many
proclaimed their rights to practice Indian medicine by virtue of their
adoption by Lakota holy men. Many would not, or could not, reveal the
names of their so-called mentors.
Others said, usually quite vehemently, that they never enrolled with an
Indian tribe and never would because it was the government's way of
keeping them down. They would say, I don't need a Bureau of Indian
Affairs number to know who I am. Most didn
't understand or realize that
it was an Indian tribe that considered who or who is not a tribal member
not the BIA.
Little Eagle, who last month was elected vice president of the Standing
Rock Sioux Tribe and who is the editor and publisher of the McLaughlin,
SD, based Teton Times, a weekly newspaper that serves her tribe, began
to grow more apprehensive as her weekly series progressed because she
was now receiving outright threats.
One fake shaman, Harley Swift Deer Regan, became very vocal in his
threats. He had just been featured in an HBO Special called Real Sex
in which he allegedly revealed the sex secrets of the Cherokee people.
Then Principle Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Wilma Mankiller, protested
the lack of authenticity of this show to HBO executives demanding a
retraction of the shows contents. Of course, that never happened.
Regan's phone calls to Little Eagle became more ominous. But he wasn't
the only one. Some of the women shaman exposed in the investigative
series by Little Eagle also went from a defensive position to an
extremely offensive stance. They also threatened Avis with lawsuits and
worse. Of course, as the editor of Indian Country Today, Avis came to me
with all of the threats and I had to really encourage her not to give up
on the series but instead to let me handle the threatened lawsuits.
You have to understand that some of the false shaman professed to have
extraordinary powers. They attacked Avis with threats of a curse or they
told her that they would put bad medicine on her and her family. A
series of personal bad happenings to Avis totally unrelated to the
series or to the shaman only served to increase the fear that was
developing in her mind.
At last Avis started to write Part 10, the final issue of the series. It
was a summation of all the nine other parts of the series and her
conclusions. As I walked by to pat her on the back as she labored at
that last part she had a look of great relief on her face. Her lunch
hour came right in the middle of it so she cheerfully headed home to
eat.
Not five minutes had passed since her departure when her computer
monitor suddenly exploded in smoke and flames. Wow! All of the staff
still in the office reacted in horror. I immediately told the crew to
get her monitor out of there and replace it with an exact duplicate. Of
course all of the memory was in the hard drive so nothing was lost and
her computer was just sitting there ready for her to resume the article
when she returned from lunch.
I swore my staff to secrecy and no one ever told Avis about the
mysterious fire that erupted in her monitor. In fact, this is the first
time I am revealing this because Avis did finish the 10-part series that
day and breathed a sigh of relief. I'm afraid she would have reacted
quite differently if she knew what had happened while she was at lunch.
A coincidence? One would suppose so, but no doubt those who delve into
the dark regions of illicit shamanism do so for a reason. Evil can be
manifested in many ways and in this day and age of modern technology;
many of us do not understand the depths of spiritualism, real and
imagined.
The series by Avis exposed many false shamans and she believes to this
day that the new owners of Indian Country Today should retrieve her
series from the dustbins of the newspaper morgue and re-publish them
because there are still many false shamans out there.
(Tim Giago is the president of the Native American Journalists
Foundation, Inc., and the publisher of Indian Education Today Magazine.
He can be reached at Tim Giago or by writing him at
2050 W. Main St., Suite 5, Rapid City, SD)
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Last updated on December 04, 2005