* White Shamans and Plastic Medicine Men

A Native American colleague of mine asked me to check into the bona fides of a certain Don Miguel Ruiz. . . . I began my email to her by saying that the fellow seemed harmless enough—very much in the vein of Castaneda's "Don Juan"—although Ruiz's apparently semi-famous "Four Agreements" didn't strike me as particularly Native, or original, or illuminating. (Well, at least there are four of them!) But other tenets of Ruiz set off alarms in my head, such as his (Native?!) belief in Atlantis and his (no doubt lucrative) classes in "Angel Teaching." Thus I wasn't too surprised to see him on a web-page list of "Books to Avoid about Native Spirituality"—in sum, he's a faker, a member of what Vine Deloria called the "New-Age/medicine man circuit."

Quot. of the Day:

"One who knows [the way] does not speak; one who speaks does not know [the way]."
    --Tao Te Ching

But all of the above means nothing to mainstream culture, apparently, a spiritually bankrupt society always more than ready to grasp in desperation at any new "way" to "salvation," "self-growth," and all that rot. Of course, any book that Oprah Winfrey mentions becomes solid gold: "This book by don Miguel Ruiz, simple yet so powerful, has made a tremendous difference in how I think and act in every encounter." For shame, Oprah (or, as some of my African-American colleagues have called yu'—"Okra"): maybe you know who's "real" on the African-American circuit, but don't let your New Age inclinations completely "color" your notion of who is really "red."

Finally, I'm reminded of a joke that pokes fun, good-naturedly, at Native "spirituality":

Three Indian women go down to Mexico one night to celebrate college graduation. They get drunk and wake up in jail, only to discover that they are to be executed in the morning, though none of them can remember what they did the night before.

The first one, a Lakota woman, is strapped into the electric chair and is asked if she has any last words. She says, "I just graduated from Oglala Lakota College and believe in the almighty power of Wakan Tanka to intervene on behalf of the innocent." They throw the switch and nothing happens. They all immediately fall to the floor on their knees, beg for forgiveness, and release her.

The second one, a Cherokee woman, is strapped in and utters her last words: "I just graduated from the Haskell Indian Nations University, and I believe that the spirits of my ancestors who died along the Trail of Tears will intervene on the part of the innocent." They throw the switch and again, nothing happens. Once more they all fall to their knees, beg for forgiveness, and release her.

The last woman, a Navajo, is strapped in and says, "Well, I'm from Diné College and just graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering, and I'll tell you right now—you ain't gonna electrocute nobody if you don't plug this thing in."  [anonymous email post; slightly revised by TCG, 2/07]