Here's the intro. Any suggestions for how to change it? Anything left out? Maybe someone funnier than me should take a shot at it...
------
Introduction
Nuage = New Age. It is pronounced noo-ij, rhymes with sewage.
Many Natives and critics of Nuage use the word to puncture the pompousness and pretentiousness of a movement that would call itself “THE NEW AGE.” (Copyright likely pending. No matter how sooper spirchul Nuagers pose as, they are very dedicated to protecting their profit margin.) There is very little of Nuage and Nuagers that is not worthy of being laughed at and mocked, except for the tremendous pain they cause and the enormous number of falsehoods they have spread.
If you've ever wondered what the heck Nuage people are talking about, this guide is for you. You see, Nuage people don't mean the same things when they use the English words everyone else uses. That's why a guide is needed, even and especially a humorous one.
Sometimes a lie is best fought by facts and reason, pointing out patiently with evidence where someone is wrong. And sometimes certain people are so wrapped up in their delusions, the best way to deal with them is to laugh.
Laugh because they have become so far gone, it may take laughter to shock them out of it. Laugh because it's the only way of telling them just how foolish they look to everyone else. Laugh because their irrationality and lack of a grasp of reality or even the most basic common sense doesn't deserve a reasoned answer. Nuage does a lot of damage and is filled with lies. But it is also damned silly, and deserves to be mocked for its silliness.
Sometimes you also have to laugh to keep your sanity, to deal with absurdity by laughing without mercy or pity. Let us all laugh at Nuagers and mock them until the whole world sees that these fools who imagine themselves the next medicine man or guru or even would be messiahs with Jesus and God and Buddha complexes are more PT Barnum than pious men.
The Nuage movement is not made up of new religions, nor more evolved versions of old ones. This is a purely consumer driven phenomena. These are little abusive cults posing as American Indian traditions and Buddhism or Hinduism or Taoism to people who could not tell Gandhi from Geronimo. They are so ignorant that, among other obvious wrongs, they imagine American Indians believe in reincarnation. (That's the wrong kind of Indian, buddy.)
Nuagers are so clueless about indigenous people that some have fallen for:
A red haired Irishman who claimed to be a Mayan. (Harley Reagan, who also was a white racist preparing his militia for a race war against Latinos.)
A Black Muslim who claims American Indians are really Chinese imposters and that Blacks are not African and that there never was a slave trade. (Dwight York, who also claims to be a space alien.)
A Peruvian who posed as Brazilian and then sold Hindu and Taoist beliefs to hippies, pretending that faux-Buddhism and faux-Taoism were ancient Aztec and Yaqui Indian beliefs. (Carlos Castaneda, who remains a best seller though he was debunked 30 years ago. He later became a prisoner of his inner circle, who themselves committed suicide when he died.)
It seems easy enough to mock anyone who falls for these frankly idiotic delusions posing as serious new religious beliefs. And that this little dictionary shall do, without letting up. One thing American Indians have learned to do is to use humor as a coping mechanism to deal with all the pain of a horrific history. Much like Jews, Natives have (to an outsider's ear) a surprisingly good sense of humor* for a people who have survived genocide.
This dictionary and phrasebook is a collection of American Indians joking about Nuage nonsense. It's the best way of coping with having to deal with the fallout of all the damage their falsehoods have spread.
Of course the people harmed just as much by the Nuage movement as Native people (and Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and the other beliefs distorted, misrepresented, and bastardized by commercialization) are Nuage people themselves. Nuagers have often been abused, ripped off by charlatans posing as Native or Eastern religion teachers, and sometimes sexually abused.
Even when exploiters don't take a lot of their money, control their lives as part of a cult, or rape them under the guise of it being a religious ceremony, former Nuagers come out of that movement with years or decades of their very sincere lifelong spiritual quest wasted on falsehoods. Many of these definitions were written by former Nuagers who have every right to be angry, since they are much poorer for their experience, and often suffering psychological or sexual trauma.
Laughter is the best medicine, as the old saying goes. Native people know that. Former Nuage survivors know that now too. This dictionary lets us all laugh at Nuage foolishness and hopefully warn away those who might be tempted or curious about Native traditions or Eastern religions and would rather try to buy quick enlightenment with a $3,000 weekend seminar or a cheesy $19.95 book instead of doing a lifetime of hard study and introspection.
For those who want to do the hard study, the final section has more sources recommended for further reading. For the rest, let's just laugh at those sheltered very wealthy and upper middle class suburbanites who make up the Nuage movement, with too much money and not enough sense.
Enjoy, and spread the word. This little dictionary or guidebook is completely free. Share it with others, repost it, quote it, cut and past the whole thing if you like. There was never any thought of profit or personal gain by us.
You see, unlike Nuagers, and especially unlike the exploiters and imposters who pose as sooper spirchul leaders by falsely claiming to be Chief Stereotyped Silly Name of the Tribe of the Imaginary, Believed in Only by the Unfortunately Clueless...
We at NAFPS have always done everything for free, and simply because it is the right thing to do and needed to be done.
