Charlotte Goodrich AKA Char Sundust

[charsundust@comcast.net]

Greetings,
 
I would like to offer some points of clarification: I do have Iroquois and Mexican in my heritage. My great-grandfather, Edward Smith, was born in Mexico.
My specific and comprehensive heritage will be reflected on my website. As we know, there are, and were, many who do not enroll in census for their own reasons. My grandmother and grandfather chose to not participate for racial reasons. They also changed their names, which was common practice due to racial issues at that time. I trust my parents, grandparents, and elders in these matters and how they raised me to honor all their ways.
 
I have integrated and appreciate so much my mixed lineage and honor the spirituality of each lineage joined in me.
 
I am grateful to have had, and still have, mentors, teachers, and elders whom I deeply trust to clarify and guide me in the most beneficial directions for me to serve well.
 
Sincerely,
 
Char Sundust
charsundust@comcast.net

[earthw7]

 Since the Iroquois are not a tribe but group of tribes which nation do you come from

[Defend the Sacred]

The tribes keep their own records. If someone and their ancestors are not known to the tribe, it means they are either non-Native or their family assimilated so long ago that they are no longer culturally Native. If the tribe doesn't claim you, you're not Native.

[Epiphany]

As we know, there are, and were, many who do not enroll in census for their own reasons. My grandmother and grandfather chose to not participate for racial reasons. They also changed their names, which was common practice due to racial issues at that time.

Char, I have a different view of census than you, I would not use the word "enroll", in my experience censuses are a list of those counted in a specific area at a specific time. Not everyone is counted in each federal or state census, but many are. Census takers are people of their time, some information is inaccurate, sometimes because of the census taker themselves, sometimes because what neighbors report, sometimes because of what the families themselves report.

That said, census can help in genealogy work. They can provide possible pieces to the puzzle.

As Kathryn has said, tribes keep their own records.

You mention grandparents, are you speaking of your maternal or paternal grandparents? If your maternal grandparents are Conrad H Goodrich and Charlotte Irene Guinn, they are both in 1930 and 1940 federal census.

I do have Iroquois and Mexican in my heritage. My great-grandfather, Edward Smith, was born in Mexico.

You know, being born in Mexico doesn't necessarily mean anything other than being born in Mexico. Are you claiming that this ancestor's birth in Mexico means you have more spiritual insight?

Edward Smith, is this a paternal or maternal great grandfather?

Iroquois? Which Nation? Why do you claim any of this to promote yourself?

[Sparks]

I notice that Charlotte Goodrich AKA Char Sundust
(charsundust@comcast.net http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?action=profile;u=6269)
was active a couple of days after the questions in the previous post were asked (more than five years ago), but she chose not to answer them.

This woman is still very active. The URL of her homepage is now:

http://sundustoracle.charsundust.com/soi-w/. ["Sundust Oracle Institute"]

Her bio has changed (again) and is now here, which I quote in full with my bolding:

About Char Sundust
Char Sundust is a spiritual director, mentor, teacher, and healer. She provides ceremony for convocations, graduations, and the celebrations and life passages all human beings experience. She has a healing practice integrating ancient and cutting edge technologies so more healing modalities, are available, as all healing begins with the soul. She works with many cross-cultural practices, including shamanism, as there are remnants of shamanic practice on all continents of the world. Char comes from a rich cross-cultural heritage which has inspired her to create programs for people to recover and discover their ancestral root, and spiritual identity and apply these learnings to support a deeply personal spiritual practice that can be applied to change our internal world which creates positive change in the external world. She has developed a program to assist those who want to access their inherent body wisdom and to cultivate and develop and recognize their intuitive nature and body wisdom, and to recognize the voice of Spirit in their own natures. She has developed numerous programs for personal, professional, and spiritual development, including a year-long Leadership and Mentorship course, a program for personal healing and soul work, applied spirituality program, a program for writers, writing as spiritual practice called “flow”, and a couple’s workshop for people in long-term, committed relationships, because we bring ourselves to any relationship we are in.
 
Char has been the resident spiritual advisor and mentor at Bastyr University and works with IT communities, corporations, businesses, and universities to create an environment of mutuality and humanity where everyone wins. She does one on one mentorships for personal, professional and spiritual development, mentoring individuals and groups to go to the next level in their health and wellbeing creative, emotional, spiritual, and professional lives.
 
Some of the places her work has been seen and heard are on KEXP, and KZOK, The Jeff Renner show, and Evening Magazine. Also on NPR, in collaboration with Charles Jefferson and her adopted Lakota mom Barbara Means Adams in Iyaye. She also has monthly podcasts that can be found at medicine media. She is the co-author of God, Death, and Poetry with William Whittman and contributing author to Altar-Making. She is an award-winning poet and her poetry can be heard on Thousands of miles with David Close.
 
Char is deeply committed to the sustainability of nature and attending to the earth’s well-being. She assists individuals in achieving their destinies through spiritual practice and personal accountability. She is a bridge of the many cultural wisdoms we have access to at this time to create tangible, positive change in our internal and external environments. Char comes from a rich, spiritual background. She is grateful for the wisdom and learning passed down to her from her Apache, Mexican, English, Irish, and German ancestors. She also thanks her adoptive mother, Barbara Means Adams who was Lakota-Sioux. She is honored to be a protégé of Angeles Arrien and her work in transpersonal psychology and the four fold way. She thanks all of these ancestors and is grateful for all that has been given her to serve and preserve what is good, true, and lasting.

Then she is now on Facebook with two profiles:

https://www.facebook.com/charsundust [Char Sundust]
https://www.facebook.com/soi.sundust [Sundust Oracle Institute]

[Piff]

From Yelp reviews: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sundust-oracle-institute-seattle

You may find her quite helpful in your time of need, but you are signing up to be manipulated, and vulnerable in ways you may regret later.

... I now have some significant concerns about the safety of those who would take her on as a spiritual teacher and mentor.

...  I can see now that there were numerous times when she really overstepped her area of expertise and people let her amidst this air of specialness.  She has no medical or psychological qualification, I recall numerous times when she gave (paid) medical or psychological advice to myself or others.  For example, she told me assuredly that one friend's involvement in her classes would cure his new severe psychotic mental illness. (It didn't)... Another time that a tooth I had injured climbing would just heal.  (It didn't).

[educatedindian]

Several other parts from those reviews I think need to be posted.

"I was a student of Char Sundust and assisted with many of her programs from 2007 to 2015....

I was relieved when the day for talking finally came, to have a chance, I thought, to resolve a serious concern.  I was wrong -- very wrong.  She called me 15 minutes after our scheduled 15 min meeting.  She lied to me within the first two minutes of the call.  I let her speak first, thinking she would surely want to hear clarification on my concerns and the (verifiable) facts surrounding them, but that never came, even when I later asked for it directly.  Instead, she berated me, threatened me that the whole community would think poorly of me and reject me for speaking out, claimed psychic knowledge of my (unbeknownst to me) evil motives, poked at what she believed to be my vulnerabilities, tried over and over to exert her "teaching" power over me and turn the conversation from its original purpose into an assessment of her perception of my weaknesses and the far too common new age lie that everything that I witnessed was really just a reflection of what was inside me.  She repeatedly slung at me "facts" I knew objectively to be false and could disprove with objective evidence, and generally tried to undermine my sense of reality about what I witnessed (and she did not).  Not surprisingly, none of this remotely resembled her noble-sounding teachings around accountability. 

....I do not believe anyone should be involved with a teacher who will not be honest and accountable and avoid any temptation to control others through subversive tactics for their own self-interest."

Before I'd argued she was a naive woman with vague unproved claims of ancestry grasping at straws. Now she's become destructive and is building a cult like following with cult tactics and behavior. Moved to Frauds.

[Sparks]

[…]http://www.eco-res.com/eco-res.asp?page=groups_assemblage

I will quote this bio in full, to compare with later bios (my boldings):

Some of those who inspire us...

Char Sundust is a shamanic practitioner with strong ancestral lineage of medicine work and experiential training. Her love of Spirit and medicine began at her beginning - her work truly is to bring herself into the right relationship with the divine; and her work is to guide and mentor others in discovering the invisible in their own personal culture.

Char's mother encouraged her visions by asking if the ghosts Char began seeing at the age of five were friendly or not. Her mother explained that if the ghosts were friendly they were good allies. If they were not, they were invited to exit. People need to know how to set boundaries, and how to exit a spirit if they need to exit it. One of the things that Char has noticed is that people need support when they are seeing, hearing, or feeling the spirits around them. She had the gift of understanding people around her, and innately knew who was willing to support her, and to help her focus and hone her skills.

At the age of fourteen, Char began her training where she started learning medicine work in the Cheyenne tradition taught by her stepfather. As medicine work has been the focus on Char's life since childhood, she has performed psychic readings for nearly twenty years. In addition, Char is currently a practitioner of shamanic healing art and teaches classes and workshops at the Sundust Oracle Institute, a center for healing and teaching, founded in 2002. Char travels worldwide performing soul retrievals, house blessings spirit readings, and leading student apprentices on shamanic journeys. She guides others to discover the ability of each person to connect clearly, to develop all of his/her senses, to accept the challenge that is rich with contentment of healing and giving and receiving guidance. This discovery heals, loves and teaches in a way that makes a difference in both realities.

Barbara Means-Adams, a Lakota author and story teller was Char's mentor for five years. She later completed her two year apprenticeship with Sheila Belanger, a shamanic practitioner and astrologer.

Sundust is the medicine name given to Char by her first teacher at sixteen years of age after two years of intense training. It is an Apache family name.

(There are five more bios on that page, including big-time fraud Alberto Villoldo.)

The above bio also contains Char Sundust's claim of "Cheyenne tradition". Her claimed Cheyenne heritage has been discussed here in this thread, especially in posts beginning on November 20, 2013. It diminished from the "Cheyenne stepfather" to where she herself here in the thread claimed he was "half Cheyenne River Sioux and half German", while our genealogists found that he was not at all Cheyenne nor any other tribe. And note, all references to Cheyenne are gone in her present biography on her own page:

Her bio has changed (again) and is now here …:http://sundustoracle.charsundust.com/soi-w/about-char-sundust/

[mixed]

I've followed this thread since its inception due to having friends, acquaintances, and colleagues affiliated Char Sundust, and I check on it every few years. I was taken one of her classes and never returned, put off by her trying to get us to connect to the earth by listening to new age music, her talk of her personal chef, and despite that, charging me $45 to attend when I wasn't financially stable.

I've since learned not voice any criticism I have about her to people who are still mentored by her, and who utilize Char as a mental health counselor despite Char's lack of training or professional oversight and accountability. I won't deny that SOME of these people have benefited and grown personally a bit from her help, but her power of them has never sat right with me. They've also mentioned that they do not share certain information with her for fear that other members of the circle will find out, which needless to say isn't right for a person who is in the role of mentor, therapist and guru.

I am the same product of the Seattle New Age scene that Epiphany, and know well how this kind of hodge-podge, culturally-appropriating and personal-empowering New Age spirituality is used to bypass the deeper and much harder work of processing personal trauma. I've met followers who have fallen out with her who have been lost and confused afterward, totally disassociated from reality after their immersion into her feel-good world of psychic powers, divination, and feeling of spiritual connection.

I'm posting this now to back up Educated Indian's post from last year. Be wary of her. One should always be able to think critically about a spiritual teacher, and if not, something is wrong. Also, I highly recommend seeing a qualified professional for mental health issues, in addition to a spiritual teacher if spiritual guidance is important to you.  They are rarely one and the same, and it helps do develop a more stable sense of self not to give one person so much power and authority over of one's mind.