Native American-Calico

   I am frequently asked if I am a Native American Shaman or do I teach Native American teachings. The answer is no, for a few reasons. The first one being that there is no general consensus of what “Native American” really is. 

   We are on a continent which had about fifty different languages and maybe three million people at the time of colonization. Some “nations” were patriarchal and others matriarchal. Some tended to be fisherman, some hunters and some farmers. Now take all that with the same square area as we have in this country and drop it on land around the Mediterranean Sea and tell me you can define what a “Native European” is. How would you do that? By language? By culture? France, Germany, Spain and Greece are all fairly close to one another and you wouldn’t be able to define from them what is Native European the same way people here are trying to define Native American.

   Like most American kids I grew up in some kind of mixed culture. I had the Native American, German and Irish thing going on. They all had a rich background that was to some extent replaced with alcoholism, obesity and domestic violence and sprinkled with diabetes. I learned about the Sweat Lodges as I did the Sweat Houses of the Celts. I learned about the Spirit Guides as I did the Gods and Goddesses. I learned about archaeology and history too. 

   Let’s look at race and tradition. We know that the Celts and Norse were visiting here about five hundred years before Columbus. We can safely assume that people probably tried out the new people and had kids a little different than usual. Celts had some darker ones and the natives had some lighter ones and this went on for a while. After Columbus it went on even more so at what date do we say that the true Native Americans were no longer a pure breed? When did the language start to get modified, as all languages do with new people? When did the traditional ways start to get diluted? I think we can say it happened a long, long time ago. 

   By the way, slavery was alive and well long before the whites brought blacks. So were kidnapping, torture and genocide. Let’s all be clear on that. 

   The whites were new players in the hood there was the element of iron knives and guns to which natives used on each other to gain power and widen their territories and more and more of their culture was left behind as they mixed with the whites. 

   Now, in a time when the traditional Natives are wearing  jeans, cowboy hats and boots with belts that have buckles the size of Frisbees there is this grand effort to preserve tradition. One of the groups of this honorable effort is AIM (American “Indian” Movement) Remember India? That’s the place on the other side of the planet that Columbus was looking for. So anyways these groups are trying to lock down a date that will mark a period where we can say defines what traditional Native American culture is so that the cultural icons can be brought back to strengthen the people. Like casinos. 

   At every meeting I went to that was about preserving tradition, everyone was dressed like white people. Many were drinking or drunk and they all drove there. They lived in houses that burned natural gas and used electricity. They ate their corn flakes and smoked their Marlboros and shopped at grocery stores, threw their trash into landfills that used to be beautiful valleys, hunted with rifles and watched TV. That’s Native American life now. Ya ya, hey hey, don’t bogart that sacred pipe my friend. 

   There are parts of my panoramic cultural background I miss but for the most part I was happy to leave. To those people the universe was that mountain range with the whites, reds and the mixes of what ever stayed the night. I just couldn’t take them serious any more. Since I left I’ve met more mixed breeds that had the same story as mine and they left their areas for the same reasons and met more open minded Shaman.

   Mixed breeds just don’t fit in. On one side you’re a timber nigger and the other you’re white trash. If Natives and Whites have a problem with mixed breeds they should stop doing each other.

   I was run out of one meeting because I acknowledged that I was a mix of Seneca, Mohawk, Irish, Scot and German. I also said that you can not paint a beautiful picture with just one color and that all of them were only a small part of the kind of person they will never be. Yay for the mixed breeds! Yeah, I’m Native American, I’m Calico. 

   To the open mind Shamanism is a word used to describe an evolution of the spirit. Real Shamanism pulls what works best from all directions. I could use other words instead of Shaman like khogan, leah hehnah, and atsizi but in regular conversations it wouldn’t work so what’s the point? 

   We are becoming a global community and the haters and dogma advocates are no different than the dinosaurs. They are their way out.  Ceremonies are what you make them. Spirituality is whatever works for you. Sex fits in wherever you want it to.  

   A long time ago people brought the Shaman or whoever, food, firewood and whatever else they needed. Now people bring the Shaman pieces of paper with dead guys painted on them. It doesn’t really matter what the exchange is, it just needs to be there to complete the circle.  

         I guess I just do plain old American Shamanism and some of that came from a project I did in Colombia South America. If my life continues as it has I’m sure I’ll add a little more from experiences that showed me something new. Why not?