Question by Mariposa Traicionera: Good books that discuss Shamanism/Native American spirituality, etc?
What are the best books(aside from Jamie Sams’ books – I have hers) to learn more about these and similar belief systems?
Best answer:
Answer by Classical Liberal Jochan
The Doors of Perception is decent.
Give your answer to this question below!
Native Americans do not have Shamans and are extremely offended if you refer to the Medicine people or Elders as such. Alaskan Natives have Shamans, as do a bunch of other cultures.
Shaman is a word from the language of the Evenk people of Siberia.
The sytems are not as similar as you seem to think and medicine people usually do not do all the same things as Shamans.
It is easy to confuse Animism-the belief that everything has spirit, with Shamanism because some Animist cultures have Shamans, many do not. and some non animist cultures have Shamans
Anyway a great book on Shamanism is the book
Shamanism by Piers Vitebsky, he is a professor at Oxford University
It has lots of visuals and great explanations, draws on various cultures.
jamie sams, brooke medicine eagle, harley swift deer, carlos casteneda, jamake highwater, ward churchill…all frauds. none of them are native but they all claimed to have native “shamanistic” knowledge.
as has already been said above, we do not have shamans. most if not all of what you read in books is false since we do not share our beliefs anymore with people outside our communities. too many people like the ones listed here have exploited native ways and identity so i guess you can say they ruined it for everyone.
None of the authors of books on NDN “spiritualism” are legitimate. This is the sort of thing that happens when we let these people into ceremonies for 1 reason or another. They decide to write a book, claiming to be some sort of “big medicine man, or woman” and spread mis-information about us, This is why so many of us are unwilling to talk about our culture.
There is a difference between looking for books that discuss the topic of Native American spirituality…and Wannabe Indian/New Age BS. If you are just interested in this as a topic there are some anthro books that will have a *little bit on this subject, but I would include the following caveat as well – most of these studies are from an outsiders point of view and (mis) interpretation. Natives usually don’t discuss the real or deep religious aspects of culture. And then again, some tribes are entirely Christian nowadays and don’t know their own indigenous beliefs.
Most books on “Native American Spirituality” are total bunk…