Re: Native Spirituality
Sidney Skinner (sskiner@igc.org)
Tue, 14 Jan 1992 15:35:00 PST
Although I've never met the woman, Oh Shinnah's ads say she is an
Apache now, not Tsalagi. Brook Medicine Eagle, not shield, says
she is native, I can;t remember the tribe. I'm much more tolerant
of native people selling $800 vision quests and the like than I am
of whites, so these issues are imortant to me. Also, Both women,
as I recall raise money for native elders and low income
reservation indian peoples survival. I can get the exact details
tomorrow. Sometimes this issue can come down to one person
descibing herself as being from a certain tribe, say for example a
tribally enrolled 1/8 part native person, and other people in her
tribe don't really consider that to be sufficient. Or people who
have been adopted by a particular tribe or clan who were born
white. Do they then have any right to teach what they've learned,
if theire teachers say it's O.K.? I think it's important to ask
the individual concerned her side of the story, because there is
quite a rumor mill both in Indian communities and in spiritual
white communities. I'm a white woman who wonders about these
issues a lot.