Pantheacon (17) – White Girl Shamanism

I concluded Pantheacon 2013 with a pair of excellent workshop.  The first was titled “White Girl Shamanism.”  It addressed cultural issues around the study of shamanism.

 

Is this a good way to phrase this?  The point is that a lot of people who did not grow up in native/indigenous cultures have become interested in what they call shamanism—which we understand as originating in native/indigenous cultures.  This raises issues of “cultural appropriation” and “spiritual tourism.”

Looking back at this, I have to ask what we mean by “indigenous.”  I’m not an anthropologist.  I’m guessing we mean a group that has never left its place of origin.  Less precisely, perhaps, it would be a group that has no memory or record of ever having lived anywhere else.  The Australian Aborigines may have come to Australia from somewhere else—but they have no collective memory of that.

If shamanism is something indigenous, tribal—can I ever put myself into that mindset?  Unlikely.  I personally have traveled all over the planet.  My earliest memories are of Pennsylvania, which I hardly know.  I can’t imagine growing up in the same place as my ancestors of centuries ago.  I can’t even imagine what it is like to still be living in the same place I grew up!

On the other hand, if shamanism finds a basis in universal experience, why shouldn’t I call myself a shaman?  If I go into trance and encounter Intermediaries—Power Animals, Totems; if these trance experiences enable me to bring back wisdom with which to serve my community—is it wrong to follow these practices?

I left this workshop musing over what has been one of my own studies; I guess I’d have to call it “Wagnerian Shamanism.”  Perhaps I’ll do a workshop one day—though I feel this is my own solitary path.  As I mused I thought again of Burroughs' dictum:  “Mind your own business.”  I wondered how to respect boundaries and fears, how to know when to reach out and when to hold back, how to know when to keep silent.  Finally I bent myself again towards my Writer’s Way

Awakening on Thanksgiving, 2012

Woke up this Thanksgiving morning with many thoughts all jumbled together, trying to form a coherence.  Rather than coherence here, I’ll aim for images and splotches of feelings.

Thinking of William Burroughs, having finished reading Naked Lunch last night.  I know people personally wounded by addiction, or the addictions of their friends or relatives.

Thinking of Burroughs poem, “Thanksgiving Day, 1986” (quoted below).

Thinking of guns.  A friend of mine is buying a gun to defend herself from a stalker.  I’ve been reflecting on that, but I’ll share those thoughts later; they need to settle a bit more.

Thinking of friends far away, hoping I get to know them better as the years come and pass.

Thinking of the United States, and all the countries and people of the Americas, actually; and the world.

Thinking of places I’d like to visit and know better—particularly Latin America.

Thinking of the film I saw over the weekend, George Wallace, with Gary Sinise and Angelina Jolie.    

Thinking of the white southerners depicted in the film, and the blacks brought here as slaves, “freed,” then left to fend for themselves in a hostile, exploiting society.

Thinking of Martin Luther King, killed for demanding justice

Thinking of John Kennedy, assassinated on this date, forty-nine years ago.

Thinking.

. . .

Wondering (when I woke up, anyway) whether people fall into three categories:  People who have always lived in the same place, people who have willingly travelled about, and people who are taken against their will to other places.

Waking this morning, I felt a great connection to all the people who had come to the Americas from Europe.  I’d been reading, last night, about Buenos Aires; and thinking about the many people of the Americas who came here from Europe (and wondering why someone would leave the place they were born, to live and die somewhere else, far from their parents, family, and what they were used to).

Then thinking about people who have never lived anywhere other than where they were born; whose ancestors have lived there as well, as far back as memory or history goes.  Wondering how it is possible to stay in one place.  My own background is so different.

Thinking about Africa, the original home of all humans, scientists say (though indigenous American legends and so on would dispute that); Africa the Great Indigenous Homeland (yet how differently “Whites” think of the “Black Africans” and the “Native Americans” and the “Australian Aboriginals” and themselves).

And thinking about the people who were conquered, or who were enslaved, or who were kidnapped and dragged off somewhere else against their will; abused, exploited, tortured, killed; considered of no importance other than for how they could be used.

And thinking of our current situation, the vast machinery of Black Friday, in the land where the commercial exploitation of each holiday begins at midnight at the end of the previous holiday; or even sooner—where Santa Claus now appears in stores not long after Halloween, before we’ve even staggered into Thanksgiving.

A friend of mine calls the United States a “heaving monstrosity.”  Burroughs, in his inimitable way, says “Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.”

Nevertheless, I’m still thankful for my friends, my lovers, my family.  I’m still glad I’ve grown up and live in the United States.  I’m thankful for my own past and my own present, in spite of the contradictions and paradoxes and darkness contained therein (along with the light).