FROM ANOTHER GROUP IAM ON~~~ NATIVE AMERICAN SPIRITUALITY

(these are not my words..but i found this in my documents and thought it
would be nice to post...the only thing i disagree with is this author
calling our beliefs a 'religion'...we have a Spirituality, and are spiritual
folks not religious..
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I felt the need to post this...

Judging from the email I get, there are a lot of people out there trying to
learn about traditional Native American religion and spirituality these days
Many of them are trying to do this on the Internet.



Now, there is a lot of garbage and misinformation on the Internet no matter
what subject you're talking about, but American Indian religion and
spirituality has got to have the worst signal-noise ratio of any of them.
The 'information' out there about American Indian religions ranges from
inaccurate school projects by seven-year-olds, to deeply biased
generalizations about the 'heathens' written 300 years ago, to hucksters
pretending to be Native American shamans to scam money off of people, to
useful and interesting information about actual American Indian religious
traditions past and present. Sorting through these sites can be a nightmare.
I wish you a lot of luck with it. Before you start, let me give you a few
words of experience.



There are two reasons to be looking for information on Native American
religions. The first, and easier to address, is educational. Either because
you're a student who's been assigned to or just out of intellectual and
cultural curiosity, you would like to learn more about how American Indians,
or a particular tribe of American Indians, view the world. If that's you,
then your main problem is going to be identifying the authentic and
trustworthy sources. Indians are happy to talk about their beliefs and
spiritual practices, both historically and in the modern day. Unfortunately,
so are plenty of ill-informed non-Indians (or people of Indian descent) who
think they know a lot more than they do. And so are those unscrupulous souls
willing to pretend they're something they're not in hopes of making a buck
or getting a little attention. My best recommendation is to get a Native
American book out of the library as well as looking on the Internet, since
any quack shaman can put up a website but it's a lot harder to publish a
book. I also suggest ignoring and avoiding information about American Indian
spirituality presented by anyone:

1. Offering anything religious for sale. Money is never accepted by
authentic holy people in exchange for Indian religious ceremonies like sweat
lodges or sun dances, nor for religious items like medicine bags or smudged
items. (They might sell arts and crafts, of course. Use your common sense--a
devout Catholic might sell you a hand-carved crucifix to hang on your wall,
for example, but he wouldn't sell communion wafers over the Internet or
charge you admission to bring you to his church! Selling dreamcatchers or
fetish carvings online is one thing, but don't believe information provided
by anyone who is trying to charge people for smudging or blessing anything,
making medicine, or letting them take part in a sweat lodge or dance. They
are not authentic sources of information.)



2. Inviting you into their religion on their webpage. Authentic Indians may
seek to educate strangers online, but actually adopting an outsider as part
of their culture is only done face-to-face and after knowing the person for
some time.



3. Claiming to be American Indian shamans , talking about tarot cards and
Wiccan/pagan things, or talking about crystals and New Age things. I've got
nothing against shamanism, paganism, or the New Age, but a cow is not a
horse: none of these things are traditionally Native American. Shamanism is
a Russian mystic tradition, Wicca is a religion based in pre-Christian
European traditions, Tarot readings are an Indo-European divination method,
and the New age  is a syncretic belief system invented, as its name suggests
in the modern era. None of them have anything to do with authentic Indian
traditions, and anyone who thinks they do is likely to be wrong about
anything else he claims about Native American religions as well. Wiccans and
New Agers don't have any more knowledge about actual American Indian beliefs
than you do.



4. Identifying only as 'Native American' or 'American Indian' (an authentic
person would list their actual tribal affiliation). Be a little wary, too,
of people trying to speak with authority who identify as "mixed-blood" or
of Indian descent" or having a "Cherokee ancestor." There are certainly some
mixed-blood people who were raised in their tribe's culture, but many more
were not. A person who has rediscovered his Indian heritage as an adult is a
seeker, not a teacher. He is not qualified to speak authoritatively about
Native American religion or culture, for he wasn't raised that way and doesn
t have any more knowledge about it than anyone else learning about it
second-hand--including you.

If you're trying to learn about American Indian religion because you want to
become a part of it, though, you not only face that problem, but another,
much deeper one as well: American Indian spirituality is not evangelistic.
It is private and entirely cultural. You cannot convert to 'Native American'
any more than you can convert to being black. (In fact, many Indians--myself
included--are Christians in addition to our traditional tribal beliefs, just
like many black people are Christian in addition to being black.) The only
way to 'join' a Native American spiritual tradition is to become a member of
the cultural group, and it's impossible to do that over the Internet. No one
who truly believed in American Indian spirituality would ever offer to tutor
total strangers in religious matters online, much less charge anyone money
for such a thing. So, by definition, the people who make these offers are
those who either don't really believe in Native American spirituality, or
don't know very much about it. Is that really who you want to be listening
to?