I originally posted most of this in
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=3687.0.
What is wrong with people? They live in fantasies. I was talking to a friend who is "eclectic" to put it mildly. I was explaining why it was so wrong that someone she knows was using White Buffalo Calf Woman as one of her deities in her "pantheon.
I started wondering how non-Natives would even get the idea to try this. So I did some looking around. I think I have found one of the ways this misappropriation of White Buffalo Calf Woman started. Here is a book by Patrician Monaghan that makes some rather offensive claims:
http://www.llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9781567184631Goddess Companion - Daily Meditations on the Goddess
"Now you can turn every day into a day dedicated to the goddess and your own personal spiritual evolution, when you get The Goddess Companion by Patricia Monaghan."
"This spirit-nourishing collection of 366 authentic goddess prayers, invocations, chants, and songs was culled from dozens of diverse eras and cultures."
"·Each is illuminated by readings about the ancient quote that offer rich material for reflection, inspiration, and bliss
·Explore
the goddess as envisioned by 68 different cultures throughout the ages—including
the Americas, classical Greece and Rome, Asia, ancient Sumeria and Babylonia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa
·Find prayers that encompass nearly 130 aspects of the goddess, from Aida Weydo and Amaterasu to
White Buffalo Calf Woman and Zemyna."
Obviously, this is pretty shocking. So I looked further into the author's history. All it really took was googling her name plus "White Buffalo Calf Woman" or "White Buffalo Woman". The author has been selling altered and misinterpreted versions of Native stories since 1981 at the least. I have here a copy of her "Book of Goddesses and Heroines" from 1981. And it not only includes WBCW, but terrible renditions of stories from a number of other Indigenous cultures. In some cases, she has the wrong Nation of origin for the story. In others, she has a story that's almost right, but it's ascribed to the wrong spirit. In all of them she changes key details. She shouldn't be selling these stories, let alone her own changes to them, in the first place.
I don't know if Monaghan also tries to sell ceremony, but isn't it wrong for her to sell books with twisted misappropriations of Native stories, along with allegedly traditional "prayers, invocations, chants and songs" and suggestions for people to create their own ceremonies based on these stolen or imagined fragments? Isn't that how lots of the frauds we list here got started? And if she is spreading this kind of stuff in her books, I think there is a good chance the info ends up being used by frauds.
