nuage shaman frauds

Wonderful on the outside Treacherous on the inside....! Cults have millions of members around the world who also thought they were immune.
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nuage shaman frauds

Unread post by joe sz »

I came across this site again. It basically challenges and exposes fake shamans that abuse Native heritage.
http://www.newagefraud.org/
this conversation re a "nuage" white woman tryng to defend her 'new thought' and yogananda background is good
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=3799.15

Re: Zara (Barbara L. Bolstad) Washington state
« Reply #15 on: May 16, 2013, 02:48:43 PM »With references to Shamanism and Harnerism removed, I also see this is ok for archiving.
These silly hippie dippie new agers with their ridiculous therapies are always going to be duping anyone stupid and foolish enough to buy into them. But if someone goes to some white woman for any spiritual service or ceremony whatsoever it is misguided, and especially some newagekracker who claims to offer services such as "past life regression hypnotherapy", etc, anyone who these people rip off, deserves it for being such a gullible idiot. But at least once they agree to stop doing it in the name of misrepresenting a culture or tribe, really they just make white folks look like the silly hippies they are. White people's culture is spiritual empty because of its colonialistic and consumeristic nature, and thus whites are so desperate for 'mystical' or 'alternative' therapies (as when they were all a bunch of christians they destroyed anything earth-based their own ancestors had as far as traditions go), so they make it popular to run around selling snake oil to other gullible morons such as themselves. If it were not so sad and pathetic, it would be funnier, lol.

« Last Edit: May 16, 2013
Lost in Space
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

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Are you saying you agree with this writer, Joe? She does not sound like the most rational impartial critic on the block to me. She sounds small minded and bigoted, and is sneering at New Agers, White People and Christians alike. There must be a better critique to be had.
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Unread post by joe sz »

agree? no. of course the 'writer' comes off crass, bigoted, and angry. on the other hand the nuage lady is apparently kind and sweet and understanding, even thankful that the site is only "archiving" her and not calling her an outright fraud. But look below the surface.

Native Americans I've known when i was in New Mexico for 18 years were a mixed bag. Some tapped the white fascination with all things Indian and cashed in, while others with any education and sensitivity to culture saw how insipid the parasitic New Age shamans were and are. One Acoma elder told me his people would kindly tell the wannabe shaman "hippies" to go away, that Indian spirituality was no better or worse than their Christian or Jewish traditions if they would only look.

The writer is expressing native rage for this kind of intellectual racism that the naive nuage lady embodies....she can do her New Thought therapy all she wants, just do not drag claims to Indian knowledge into it. And it is racism according to several anthropologists I've read, one a Mescalero Apache woman with a PhD I heard lecture.
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

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Okay, well, phew. Must say the lady who wrote that didn't sound like an intellectual or spiritual kinswoman of yours.
While it may be true that some natives "cash in" on their spiritual traditions and some non-natives use those traditions to enrich themselves or bolster their public image and their sales, I think that is only part of the story. Native spirituality is a rich and manifold cultural legacy and it may be that some of those who could legitimately lay claim to it are seeking to inform the rest of us. It may also be true that for some non-natives this tradition speaks to them in a way that ordinary religions in the western world don't, and they have spent years learning it, steeping themselves in it, and living it.
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you lost me here:
It may also be true that for some non-natives this tradition speaks to them in a way that ordinary religions in the western world don't, and they have spent years learning it, steeping themselves in it, and living it.
do you have any non-native Indian person in mind as an example?
not sure what you mean by "ordinary" religions?
Do mean to say that native religions are extraordinary by comparison to say Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism?
I am not sure what you mean by "it". Altho most native American spiritual traditions revolved around totemism, ancestor worship, natural forces, and forms of animism, the expression and structure of each "cult" [academic meaning] varied widely. Also, native tradition lives through the native language. Once the native speakers are gone, so is the "it" or tradition, unless of course "it" has been properly translated and ritually recreated.

Forgive me if this sounds like quibbling but this is what irritates Indians, that some whites think they are practicing Indian spirituality or claiming to when they do not.

Of course, if borrowing ideas from this and that book about Indian religion, going to powwows, wearing feathers, giving yourself an Indian sounding name like Laughs Under Water and doing native chants satisfies your soul, I see nothing wrong with that on an individual basis---just do not claim it is "Indian." That is what that site above is about.
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

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I was not suggesting that a white person can become "indian". Rather, we know of these practices from the native people themselves, some of whom are eager to pass on their traditions to those who will listen. And many a fine oral tradition can be relayed in translation. Do you speak ancient Hebrew or Aramaic, Joe? I think spirituality in the sense that it may have been passed down through ancestral lineage can go deeper than you are suggesting - powwows and such are still practiced and were regularly attended by my Native Canadian office mate (Ojiibwa), as was native dancing by her daughters, and it was no less "really Indian" because not all of the participants spoke Ojiibwa. Also taking sage, visiting the smokehouse, etc... And her mother regularly visited a shamanic healer who she felt was effective in treating her arthritis and other such ailments. Who am I to say that it didn't work? I also have some native ancestry myself, though not enough to claim any status as an indigenous person.
I am not sure what I mean by ordinary religions either but I suppose I was thinking of those with more a few thousand modern day adherents, like Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Majority rules and these are not often called cults, even if they do fit your definition of same.
I will not produce any non-native Indian people for you to criticize but I have met such people and their sincerity and in some cases wisdom is genuine.
Some Indians are instructing white people in their spiritual and cultural practice because they have much to teach us about living in harmony with nature and leaving the smallest possible carbon footprint and they are eager to do so out of respect for the land and the Earth which they revere.
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Do you speak ancient Hebrew or Aramaic, Joe?
no
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

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LiS
excuse my abrupt reply...my longer one vanished :shock:
what I was trying to relate is more about the over-idealization by the New Age community and other 'ecology-minded' folk of how earth and spirit friendly the mythic native American is. I say mythic because there were over 400 native dialects in N America pre-Columbus. "native American" is a social construct, like European, or Asian...these native groups did not all get along by any means. There is no "native American' religion or spirituality as such. A good novel and film, Black Robe, illustrates this in fiction. The Iriquois nation or confederation was one exception. I won't go into the historic animosity between Apache and Navaho.
Lately in the news
http://newsok.com/supreme-court-rules-a ... le/3856084

Native rights of a father has been in the courts, but it brings out a long argument about what it means to be Indian. The kid Veronica in this case is being bounced around by legal codes and alleged rights. The Cherokee are arguing that the kid is "Indian" according to the 1970? Indian Child Welfare Act. The adoptive white parents, who do not have custody for past 18 mo, won this round, but it is not over, so the kid remains w the father til the state runs another trial.

In a sense this is nonsense to uphold a pure Indian nation. Tribes, many of them, conducted raids on other tribes and later Mexicans and whites, kidnapping women and children before and after Columbus. So the kidnapped person was now considered "Indian" and a member of the adoptive tribe. I am reading a book about the Kiowa who conducted such raids. below is one article that mentions Comanche raids.
http://www.essortment.com/comanche-indians-63721.html

Anyway, I am agreeing with you. We are free to derive anything we want and call it Native American spirituality--as New Agers say: If it is true for me, it is true. But I think that the native struggle for identity goes on after being shattered by the European invasion, and Native Americans continue to evolve as their traditions adapt to modern times. I just do not see anything holier or better in native spirituality than I do in "ordinary" religion.

To bring this home to RSE, JZ does her grab bag thing from many esoteric and pop psychology sources to create ramthaism claiming that it comes from some "primordial" source in ramtha's godlike consciousness. There is no such "native" heaven or culture that she taps.
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excuse my abrupt reply...my longer one vanished :shock:
Could be a server timeout Joe..
Best write lengthy posts in word and paste it in... :idea:
But he has nothing on at all, cried at last the whole people....
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

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I neither entirely disagree nor entirely agree with what you have said Joe. Unlike many cultures which have been diluted, there is a sense in which Native North American culture has been insulated from the culture at large by virtue of the fact that many 'Indians' were involuntarily and now some are voluntarily confined to reservations. No, certainly, Native spirituality is not one single tradition. There tends to be a unifying thread in indigenous spirituality, though, animism - the concept that the earth and all of creation are as alive as we are and divinity lies in every living thing (and rocks are living things in this world view). Without glorifying this, it does tend to be more eco-friendly.
My native ancestors were from the Iroquois group of nations (Mohawk - keepers of the Eastern door).
New Ageism is not synonymous with Native spirituality, which is an ancient belief system little changed from Paleolithic times.
Oral transmission is not lost in translation, I don't think, and the message would be the same in Swahili. The idea that when the language dies so does the culture does not hold water.
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ok..good discussion
consider this to support what I said:
Language and culture - these seemingly different conceptions are closely interrelated to each other. Language is the mirror of culture, as it reflects not only real world around us, not only real life conditions, events, and experiences, but also a public conscience and self-conscience of the nation, mentality, national character, way of life, customs and traditions, habits, moral, system of values, vision, world outlook, and world perception. Richard M. Swiderski examines the interrelation between language and culture by the example of Navaho language. According to the researcher's "Language and Culture", for a person learning to speak another language, may well be learning to think differently. From the viewpoint of the English speaker, who tries to learn Navaho language, it may seem that learning the language of completely different culture requires "mastering an entire new philosophy of the world which then must govern the most fundamental choices of word affixes and particles" (Swiderski, 1993). Modeling Navaho in English makes impossible to learn Navaho as a language, as Navaho language is the reflection of Navaho culture.
The researcher considers that although "linking language knowledge prematurely with language learning" remains the major approach for many teachers and learners, it is impossible to learn the language with learning no culture (Swiderski, 1993). The world of an English speaker significantly differs from the world of Navaho speaker, as Navaho common values and concepts are not always integral to English expressions. The language, therefore, is the index of culture. For example, an English speaker can learn a lot about Navaho culture by studying Navaho language, or, can learn about Navaho language by studying Navaho culture (Swiderski, 1993). The language is "a way of knowing about itself it is also a way of knowing about culture" (Swiderski, 1993).

In such a way, language is a treasury, a store of culture. Language preserves cultural values - both in its vocabulary, grammar, idiomatic expressions, proverbs, sayings, folklore, scientific literature and science fiction, as well as in its verbal and written forms. The language is linked with culture as it serves as culture medium (France, 1994). Language expresses culture, and is used to transfer cultural values from generations to generations. When children learn native language, they assimilate cultural experience of their past.
there's more to this article:

http://voices.yahoo.com/language-culture-5185683.html
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PS: this is an important concept for anyone in recovery from harmful cults. Lifton and others have noted how language effects the behavior and brain in thought reform systems like RSE.
loaded language is hard to undo after the cult--it takes work to relearn how to process words appropriately again.
'if he talks like us, he is one of us' is a key factor in Lifton's analysis of loaded language.

So, whenever I conducted long interventions with cult members, I could tell they were on their way out when the language started to shift, when loaded language terms like "blue body" or "ascension" or "I am the lord of of my being" started sounding deficient or delusional in their heads, and they already started the process of changing in front of me. iow,they were no longer "natives" because they stopped "speaking that way." The language was going.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_language
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

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Sure, but there is still such a thing as a real Navaho Joe. And many with Navaho ancestry must keep one foot in the modern North American world and one in their ancestral culture.
And in terms of spirituality or religion, Judaism as we may know it from historical records (the Bible, for example) has never disappeared as a culture or faith despite years of the Jews being forced to adapt to other cultures and despite the accepted practice (most of the time throughout history) of marriage with non-Jews provided they adopt Judaism. And the practice of Judaism as a faith does not absolutely necessitate the speaking of Hebrew. And I argue so it is with Native North American culture and spirituality.
Perhaps those who leave RSE and stop speaking the lingo are an example of something and as a de-programmer or transition counselor you certainly know more about that than I would, Joe. But only recently do we see adults who were born and raised in RSE, and I wonder if it is as easy for such people upon leaving RSE to completely shift their mindsets. And would you compare a tradition stretching back tens of thousands of years with one that sprang up in the 'seventies?
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

Unread post by joe sz »

AGAIN what do think you are talking about? 10,000 years of "tradition?" Are you deriving your information from a Clovis spear point and some pottery bits?

the articles point out that language, whether it is since the 1970s or 100,000 BCE does change identification and who we and others think we are. If our "language" tells us to avoid people born under the sign of the Bull [Taurus] and go for those in th crab/ Cancer, this can dramatically change who we are and how we behave whether we lived as Neandertals or Hippies.
Orthodox Jews do not speak the same "language" as liberal reformed ones despite the same "tradition" and words. Language is not merely words on a page.
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

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I am not saying that language is irrelevant, I am saying that a culture or civilization may persist or elements of it may persist long after that language has vanished.
Also, "a few spear points" is overly dismissive of the Clovis culture for which we have evidence - see article below. As well, if we accept the theory of migration prior to or just after the last ice age (over the Bering strait), the these people already had a culture before they came here. Even the Neanderthals, who became extinct 50,000 years ago are show, by the archaeological record, to have practiced some for of Shamanism.

Paleo Armericans article from http://museumofnativeamericanartifacts.org/paleo.html

The Paleo Period is the oldest of American time periods and existed from around 12,000 BC to 8000 BC. While the pre-history of other continents such as Europe, Asia, and Africa date back many millennia further, American history begins with Paleo man. Paleo man walked in upright form. They followed and hunted herds of animals including many that are now extinct, such as the larger mammals known as "Mega-Fauna" which included the mastodons, bison antiquus, and ground sloth. Small nomadic bands of Paleo people in groups of ten to twenty, subsisting mainly on a diet of meat, were known to hunt these large and dangerous animals, as well as many smaller game animals. These animals provided the basic necessities of life - that being food and hides to use for clothing and coverings..

Mastodon

This large skull is an extinct species of elephant called mastodon. Mastodon and its close cousin the mammoth had shaggy coats of hair and are ancestors of our modern elephants. Traveling slowly, herds of mastodon were followed and hunted by early man as a very important food source. These large elephants disappeared in late paleo times, around 10,000 years ago.

Mastodon Hunting
In the paleo time period man hunted primarily large game such as the Mastodon, Mammoth, and large versions of bison known as Antiquus, and Occidentalis. These large animals are sometimes called mega fauna. You often see depictions such as this one, of the hunters running up to these large mammals with a thrusting spear trying to dispatch it. This is a scenario that probably rarely happened and was more the exception than the rule. Early hunters made use of ‘natural traps’ or situations to help acquire food. Places that had sandy river bottoms like the Arkansas River, or marshes were a natural trap for large lumbering animals. These large animals could not maneuver well in the soft, unsteady terrain and often became mired down, which made them easier to dispatch of. Another tactic used on herd animals, such as the Bison Antiquus, was for a group of men to chase the animals over a steep drop off. The hunting party would then descend to the animal and butcher them on location.




Mastodon Hunting



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Clovis Information

The Americas are sometimes referred to as the “New World”. The Clovis and other fluted points are considered New World inventions because the fluted technology occurs only here. When you look at the Clovis point you will notice a groove, or flute channel, running right down the middle of them. This channel makes it easier to attach it to a spear or knife. Clovis fluted projectile points are one of the hardest point types to make with any degree of success, and were often broke during manufacture. Artifacts have been discovered at sites in Monte Verde, Chili, that have dates, which Archeologists believe could be even older than Clovis, exceeding 13000-14000 years.



Paleo Knives and Tools

Once an animal was brought down by the hunters, there was still much work to be done. The animal, being too large to carry back to comp, had to be butchered on site. Then, the meat was transported, and the hide prepared for future use as clothing or blankets. For this task, Paleo man used knives flaked from flint. these knives may differ largely in appearance from our modern day utensils, but the design and purpose were basically the same. Often held in hand without the use of a handle made from bone, antler, or wood, the knives would have a sharp cutting edge along at least one side created by the removal of small flakes along the blade's edge. Through heavy use in cutting hide, meat, and bone, these knives would become dull. Then, another row of flakes would be removed along the edges to re-sharpen it. The overall size of a knife would eventually become greatly reduced by multiple re-sharpenings, rendering the knife un-useable. It would be discarded. Paleo man would then fashion a new knife from whatever flint type material was available nearby.
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

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Article about Archaological evidence touching upon Shamanism and the Neanderthals

staffwww.fullcoll.edu/mmonreal/Week%208.ppt
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

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This article from the charmingly named joyofsects.com website explains what I have been taught and believe to be true about native spirituality and touches on the question as to whether it may be shared by non-natives:
As American Indians emerged during the past century from the controlling influence of Christian missionaries on the reservations, they have fought to reclaim their religious heritage and to guard it from distortion by the dominant white culture of North America. Some Native Americans have expressed the feeling that their religion is not appropriate for use by outsiders, and that non-Indians have no business participating in Indian rituals such as the sweat lodge and vision quest. Other Indians have taken a different stance, saying that there is no reason why outsiders should not participate in and learn from Native American rituals and beliefs in much the same way that they have benefited from the practices of Zen, Sufism, Yoga, and other non-European belief systems. As these Indian teachers and spokespeople argue, the world has never been more deeply in need of what their tradition has to offer. And it is an ancient culture of enormous value, reaching back to the very earliest forms of spiritual life that were practiced on the earth.

Archaeologists propose that tens of thousands of years ago a somewhat uniform culture stretched around the northernmost regions of the globe from Greenland and Scandinavia to northern Asia and Siberia. The peoples of this circumpolar culture shared a common history and many religious beliefs and practices including animism, shamanism, and ceremonies centered around hunting and animals. The culture reached down into China, where it influenced the development of Taoism, and Tibet, whose shamanistic Bon culture left its stamp on Tibetan Buddhism. Beginning as long as 60,000 years ago, the peoples of northern Asia migrated across what is now the Bering Sea to Alaska and Canada, and then down through the Great Plains of North America to Central and South America.

The culture of theese migrants, the ancestors of the North American Indians, incorporated elements of religion based on both nomadic hunting (mountain and sky gods) and agriculture (earth goddesses, shrines, and temples). As in many Goddess religions, the Native Ameircan conception divides the universe into heaven, earth, and underworld. Distinctions among spirits, divinities, humans, and animals are often blurred. Animals, places, even stones and trees can possess spirits that interact with humans in a kind of cosmic harmony, similar to the ancient concept of kami in the Shinto tradition of Japan. This belief, known as animism, is common to many preliterate religions which hold that personal, intelligent spirits inhabit almost all natural objects, from stones, plants, and rivers to insects, birds, animals, trees, and mountains. Indians regard some, but not all, places as sacred; certain locations and animals are singled out as manifestations of the supernatural, including those seen in dreams or visions.

The native religions of North America, like those of other continents, by and large rely on oral rather than written transmission, which is why they are sometimes called preliterate, or primal, acknowledging their ancient status (the term "primitive" is no longer applied, because of its pejoritive connotation). In the truest sense, they make up a communal religion; many tribes and members contributing to a tradition which is basically the same for most Indians, with a wide rangs of regional and tribal variations.

Indigenous peoples look on the cosmos as a living womb that nurtures their lives, and so they have less neeed to destroy or reshape it as more technologically developed cultures do (although they sometimes abuse the land and livestock as developed cultures do). Their goal could be described as achieving harmony in the personal, social, and cosmic realms, rather than gaining personal salvation or liberation as historical religions aim to do.
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

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LiS
I see where you are coming from. i have a shelf or two full of books on Native spirituality and cultures that I actually read and notated...many many years ago.
I think you and I are divided or at least biased in some way.. I have an allergic reaction to New Age spin on anything, even aboriginal history.

I've been reading Sherman Alexie novels and essays. He was raised on a rez. He is one of a few Indian authors who are good antidotes to dreamy views of Native culture
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Re: nuage shaman frauds

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Sure, Joe, you are way more Catholic than me and I am way more New Age than you, but I think in the larger sense we could have a meeting of the minds - I just felt that your little comment re: "a few arrow heads and spear points" or whatever it was that set me off illustrated that until we dig things up history is written by the culture that predominates or supercedes, not the one that dwindles and is written over. No, not talking about Atlanteans and Lemurians, lol.
To say that the North American Indians had an ancient culture which included Shamanism was, I felt, stating a fact, not pushing for a more airy fairy view of the indigenous peoples. I think, too, that there is scholarly debate about whether those Eurasian northerners who made their way over the Bering Land Strait really were the first inhabitants of North and South America, and the oral traditions of many New World (not new age) cultures claim that the people have always been here.
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