Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2008, Page 49
intellectual or ivory-tower racism that looks down on and dismisses the achievements of a
living ancient culture as if shamanism represents a lesser evolved human being who needs a
more advanced culture to properly interpret it. Thus the neo-shaman is one that feels
justified in appropriating techniques of shamanism and marketing them for personal benefit.
Furthermore, the neo-shaman mixes or ―syncretes‖ occult notions from various religions
and spiritual philosophies as if shamanism shares a common perennial basis with all
religious ideas.
Alice Beck Kehoe (b. 1934) specializes in fieldwork among cultures with ancient roots,
especially the traditional healers and seers of North American Plains Indians. She has been
a professor of anthropology and archeology at the University of Wisconsin and Marquette
University. As her book‘s subtitle indicates, Shamans and Religion is an ―exploration in
critical thinking.‖ Kehoe begins by establishing the actual setting of a shaman culture in
Northern hemisphere areas, especially Siberia and North America. She argues that, since
the late 19th century, scholars and novelists have misapplied the term shaman to healers
and seers of cultures worldwide that bear no relation either to the Siberian Tungus people
who produced the term or to their peculiar rituals and philosophy.
Kehoe examines how her predecessors tagged shamans as living ―fossils‖ in the progressive
evolution of religious behavior that has culminated in modern European religions. Early
anthropologists surmised that shaman culture was a ―childish‖ stage, one in which
―primitive‖ or savage men believed in magic, much as preschool White children might.
Kehoe‘s intent is to distinguish proper anthropology from both the ―armchair‖ scholarship
approach of Eliade and the New Age misappropriation of shamanistic technique for
individual embellishment. Shamans proper were servants of their communities, not the
psychotherapy seekers that populate neo-shaman workshops in America. Now, I do not
disparage the healing or emotional boost any person might experience while ―journeying‖ at
a Michael Harner Way of the Shaman workshop, but I applaud Kehoe, who chose Harner‘s
New Age approach to shamanism as a prime example of misappropriation and racism.
Kehoe‘s effort reasserts the science in anthropology. She would ask that we at least respect
indigenous religion for what it means to the culture that formed it. She takes Harner to task
when he in 1990 wrote ―with respect‖ that ―shamanism‖ survives in ―primitive peoples‖ and
―low technology cultures‖ worldwide. Thus Harner homogenizes what he sees as primitive
mysticism and tribal ritual into one word—shamanism. He claims to have distilled the
essence of that shamanism, and then he recycles it for eager customers who want a piece
of authentic ―Indian‖ experience.
Kehoe‘s last chapter, titled ―Deafening Silence,‖ considers what Professor Yolanda Moses
(president of the American Anthropological Association) said: ―The silence is deafening.‖
Moses herself has some African ancestry and is labeled a black American. ―No one seems to
see themselves as racist,‖ says Kehoe on page 91. Professor Moses noticed that no one was
saying anything about this form of academic prejudice against cultures that had no written
language, thus could hardly compete in the academy with representatives. There persists a
nineteenth-century notion among anthropologists, ―a kind of generalized model of Primitive
Man. It is an unintended legacy of Progressivism.‖ Kehoe was quoting William Adams who
stated that in The Philosophical Roots of Anthropology. By Progressivism, Adams refers to
assumptions that modern man is more evolved therefore, we have a right to pigeonhole
less-evolved cultures in our image as if they were ―other‖ and non-Western.
To clarify Kehoe‘s notion of racism further, I worked with a television news reporter in New
Mexico in 1987 to produce a series called New Age: Faith, Fad, or Fiction? The reporter was
Conroy Chino, a full-blooded Acoma Indian whose culture still resided on a mesa-top Pueblo
outside of Albuquerque. Chino‘s family males were ―medicine men‖ who still practiced the
old ways while also living as modern Americans. He told me that his people were often
intellectual or ivory-tower racism that looks down on and dismisses the achievements of a
living ancient culture as if shamanism represents a lesser evolved human being who needs a
more advanced culture to properly interpret it. Thus the neo-shaman is one that feels
justified in appropriating techniques of shamanism and marketing them for personal benefit.
Furthermore, the neo-shaman mixes or ―syncretes‖ occult notions from various religions
and spiritual philosophies as if shamanism shares a common perennial basis with all
religious ideas.
Alice Beck Kehoe (b. 1934) specializes in fieldwork among cultures with ancient roots,
especially the traditional healers and seers of North American Plains Indians. She has been
a professor of anthropology and archeology at the University of Wisconsin and Marquette
University. As her book‘s subtitle indicates, Shamans and Religion is an ―exploration in
critical thinking.‖ Kehoe begins by establishing the actual setting of a shaman culture in
Northern hemisphere areas, especially Siberia and North America. She argues that, since
the late 19th century, scholars and novelists have misapplied the term shaman to healers
and seers of cultures worldwide that bear no relation either to the Siberian Tungus people
who produced the term or to their peculiar rituals and philosophy.
Kehoe examines how her predecessors tagged shamans as living ―fossils‖ in the progressive
evolution of religious behavior that has culminated in modern European religions. Early
anthropologists surmised that shaman culture was a ―childish‖ stage, one in which
―primitive‖ or savage men believed in magic, much as preschool White children might.
Kehoe‘s intent is to distinguish proper anthropology from both the ―armchair‖ scholarship
approach of Eliade and the New Age misappropriation of shamanistic technique for
individual embellishment. Shamans proper were servants of their communities, not the
psychotherapy seekers that populate neo-shaman workshops in America. Now, I do not
disparage the healing or emotional boost any person might experience while ―journeying‖ at
a Michael Harner Way of the Shaman workshop, but I applaud Kehoe, who chose Harner‘s
New Age approach to shamanism as a prime example of misappropriation and racism.
Kehoe‘s effort reasserts the science in anthropology. She would ask that we at least respect
indigenous religion for what it means to the culture that formed it. She takes Harner to task
when he in 1990 wrote ―with respect‖ that ―shamanism‖ survives in ―primitive peoples‖ and
―low technology cultures‖ worldwide. Thus Harner homogenizes what he sees as primitive
mysticism and tribal ritual into one word—shamanism. He claims to have distilled the
essence of that shamanism, and then he recycles it for eager customers who want a piece
of authentic ―Indian‖ experience.
Kehoe‘s last chapter, titled ―Deafening Silence,‖ considers what Professor Yolanda Moses
(president of the American Anthropological Association) said: ―The silence is deafening.‖
Moses herself has some African ancestry and is labeled a black American. ―No one seems to
see themselves as racist,‖ says Kehoe on page 91. Professor Moses noticed that no one was
saying anything about this form of academic prejudice against cultures that had no written
language, thus could hardly compete in the academy with representatives. There persists a
nineteenth-century notion among anthropologists, ―a kind of generalized model of Primitive
Man. It is an unintended legacy of Progressivism.‖ Kehoe was quoting William Adams who
stated that in The Philosophical Roots of Anthropology. By Progressivism, Adams refers to
assumptions that modern man is more evolved therefore, we have a right to pigeonhole
less-evolved cultures in our image as if they were ―other‖ and non-Western.
To clarify Kehoe‘s notion of racism further, I worked with a television news reporter in New
Mexico in 1987 to produce a series called New Age: Faith, Fad, or Fiction? The reporter was
Conroy Chino, a full-blooded Acoma Indian whose culture still resided on a mesa-top Pueblo
outside of Albuquerque. Chino‘s family males were ―medicine men‖ who still practiced the
old ways while also living as modern Americans. He told me that his people were often
