Native American Woo

Native Americans are a proud people with a noble heritage... a noble heritage that anyone can claim.

—Lisa Simpson, The Simpsons, season 18, ep. 12 ("Little Big Girl")

Some Native American religious practices have been appropriated

 by white people, often associated with the New Age movement, and often with little real understanding of the cultures and people whose religious practices they have appropriated. Notable white promoters of such woo have included Ernest Thompson Seton, Carlos Castañeda, Tom Brown, Jr., Steven Seagal, and Tom Laughlin's Billy Jack movies. Castañeda's books have proven to be fiction and Brown's are widely suspected to also be fiction. See the bookshelf of your local New Age bookstore for dozens of other examples. Some people try to pretend to be Native American but aren't are known pejoratively as "pretendians

" ("pretend" + "Indian").

Examples of these practices include "vision questing", "sweat lodges", and shamanism. Often these are commercial enterprises selling such experiences to New Age seekers, which angered one tribe enough over commercialization of religious beliefs to issue a "Declaration of War Against the Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality".[3] The nickname "Silver Lake shaman" (Silver Lake being a hip neighborhood in Los Angeles) has become popular among some Native Americans, particularly in New Mexico and other parts of the Southwest, an area whose native tribes and culture have long been fetishized in this manner.[4]

Usually this woo doesn't result in physical harm, though on occasion such commercialized New Age nonsense can turn deadly.[5]

Particularly irksome phenomena include:

• White wannabe shamans taking phony Indian-sounding names like "Sun Bear"[6] and "Brooke Medicine Eagle".[7] A common pejorative for these people is "plastic shaman."[8]

• The above is usually accompanied by further stereotypical representation of native culture that simplifies the culture and iconography of the plains and some Pacific tribes, throws them into one big stew, and applies it to the entire native population. The popularization of totem poles is a good example of this. Totem poles were, in fact, only built by tribes of the Pacific Northwest (modern day Oregon, Washington and Alaska in the US and British Columbia in Canada) such as the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl), Tlingit, Chinook, etc. and their construction had gone into decline during the 19th century due to the banning of potlatch ceremonies, which was when new totem poles were commonly raised. The poles made a comeback when they started drawing tourists to reservations and scaled down versions were carved as souvenirs.[9] As a result, tribes that never even constructed totem poles pre-contact began to build them and sell related novelties in order to attract tourists and the poles have become an icon of "Native American-ness."

• Mixing Native spirituality with drug culture mostly as an excuse to take peyote[10] or ayahuasca.

• Harley "Swiftdeer" Reagan's sex seminars and martial arts system that he claims are based on Cherokee teachings.[11]

• The "Nephites" and "Lamanites" are claimed as ancestors of Native Americans in the Book of Mormon; this has led to a cottage industry of Mormon apologetics citing Native American beliefs and cherry picking parallels between them and those of the Israelites. As bad as the New Agers, this is done without regard to the differences among tribes or much knowledge of modern anthropology.

• Putative "Native American" tarot decks that mix clothing and symbols from many different tribes in the same images without regard for any accuracy.[12]

• The Hopi language not having a concept of time (it does). Linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf (see Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is to blame for this one, although his ideas were simplified by others, notably Stuart Chase (an economist not a linguist) in a 1958 article and folklorist John Greenway in 1964.[13][14]

• Crystal woo. Various Native American tribes held beliefs about crystals (often quartz or rock crystal due to its wide availability), usually in relation to the crystals having sacred ceremonial value, healing abilities, or use in divination.[15] Thus, much crystal woo and crystal healing invoke Native American tropes.