Final Research Paper

Abstract

This research is focused on the popularization of neo-shamanic and New Age practices promoted via the social media application Instagram and how with the movement to radically decolonize, other movements have emerged that center settler ego while performing a form of self-indigenization while using social media status as a “spiritual” influencer to create capital and administer entheogenic medicines rooted in Indigenous ceremonial practices. As a user of Instagram, I am witnessing a trend of Westerners, Latinx, mestizo/a, or non-Black People of Color (nBPoC) promoting themselves as healers, shamans, medicine men/women/people, womb healers, curanderas/os or administers of plant and entheogenic medicine rooted in Indigenous knowledge. As a non-Indigenous person of color who perceives the healing process to include decolonial work that focuses on centering the liberation of Black and all Indigenous peoples, I perceive this behavior to be misrepresentative of decolonial healing and more so an extraction of Indigenous traditions, commodification of Indigenous knowledge, dissemination of traditional healing medicine rooted in Indigenous ceremony. This work argues that connecting with ancestral roots comes with the responsibility to decenter settler ego and not capitalize off teachings offered by Indigenous tribes. Other problematic aspects found in this research is a lack of discourse of what decolonization work or Indigenous sovereignty entails in the form of land reparations and settler moves to innocence found in “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” written by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang.