Sarah Salter Kelly, White Raven Woman

[KeepRiel]

A typical NewAge fraudster, she is charging 300$ per session and runs a variety of workshops. She speaks at Trauma & recovery places in my city. http://www.sarahsalterkelly.com/  She calls herself White Raven Woman. She does not seem to have any positive associations with any community in my city (Edmonton, AB). She claims her mother was murdered by a First Nations man out of Saddle Lake Cree Nation. I know many people from this community.

"Part of this inquiry brought me to the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in north eastern Alberta for the first time in 2010 which is where Peter was from. I met with a former  Chief who educated me from his peoples point of view the impact of colonization, 60's scoop and residential schools on his people. Eventually I met Peter's sister Marilyn who shared with me the stories of her family and child hood in cycles of violence and addiction."

This is deeply disturbing to me and I am actually going to reach out to the Band & Council of Saddle Lake. Even though she claims she went out and spoke with the community, why are all of her "spiritual teachings" coming from places like Peru and Mexico? Why didn't she bother to get more in touch with that community and learn THEIR spiritual teachings, medicines, ceremonies etc?

" 2002-2003 - Journey through the Elements and Wheel of the year teachings  - Rae Waterworth
2006-2011 - Inca Medicine wheel training and apprenticeship, included four training a year and an annual trip to Peru to work with Indigenous healers/teachers - 8 in total.
2007- 2008 - Reiki Master Teacher - Vivian Aubin
2007-2010 -  Three Alchemical healing intensives - Nicki Scully
2009 - 2015 - Five excursions to the Amazon to work with Ayahuasca
2009- Soul Retrieval facilitator training 
2010 - Peace Circle facilitator training - Kay Pranis- "YouCan Canada"
2010 - Holistic Anatomy - Northern Star College
2014 - Star level one; Strategies for Trauma awareness and resilience, United States institute for peace D.C.
2016 - Rosemary Gladstars 'Science and Art of Herbalism' - in progress"

Do any of these places look familiar or have associations with other fraudsters?

[KeepRiel]

I have an update on this woman. I received phone call regarding her activity. The individual has known her for over 20 years, long before she started acting as a charlatan. He said she makes a lot of money profiting off of people seeking help. She works out of her private home in Pigeon Lake, AB. When this person reached out to her during a difficult time in his life, she apparently rejected and hurt him - at the same time profiting off of other vulnerable people seeking to become "shamans" and "initiates."

He said Sarah started all of this as part of her healing journey after the death of her mother, but somewhere she took a very wrong turn.  Her family now lives very comfortably and they take vacations to Peru multiple times per year. There are  true spiritual elders out in Saddle Lake First Nation who can't afford basic necessities, let alone luxuries. She should truly be ashamed of herself.

[Sparks]

http://www.sarahsalterkelly.com/

She also has a blog:

http://waywardhealer.blogspot.com/ [Wayward Healer ~ www.sarahsalterkelly.com]

Her Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/sarah.s.kelly.39

Advertising lots of events via Facebook, e.g.:

https://www.facebook.com/events/healingconnectionsedmonton/8-part-shamanic-journey-with-sarah-salter-kelly/1876287185833474/

2007-2010 -  Three Alchemical healing intensives - Nicki Scully
[…]
Do any of these places look familiar or have associations with other fraudsters?

I just started a new topic about that one:

http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=5346.0
[Nicky Scully — Shamanic Journeys — Alchemical Healing]

[Sparks]

She claims her mother was murdered by a First Nations man out of Saddle Lake Cree Nation. I know many people from this community.

"Part of this inquiry brought me to the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in north eastern Alberta for the first time in 2010 which is where Peter was from. I met with a former  Chief who educated me from his peoples point of view the impact of colonization, 60's scoop and residential schools on his people. Eventually I met Peter's sister Marilyn who shared with me the stories of her family and child hood in cycles of violence and addiction."

I will quote this more fully from her own site:

In December of 1995 my mother Sheila Salter was brutally raped and murdered by a stranger in the parkade of her work. Peter was a First Nations Man who killed himself in jail after being found guilty of murder 1. This led me on a profound healing journey as I sought to reconcile my spiritual beliefs with the very real grief and tragedy of her loss.

My mother believed  there are no accidents and that everything happens for a reason - which she'd persuasively recite in my head for years after she died, and  I'd argued with her saying "I used to believe you but then you got murdered and your credibility is now really low... " (she also had a great sense of humour)  Yet as I followed the path my grief laid before me I came to a place where her words once again made sense. I knew I needed to find the courage to pursue the path of forgiveness, compassion and understanding  - to honour  her legacy and free myself of suffering.

Part of this inquiry brought me to the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in north eastern Alberta for the first time in 2010 which is where Peter was from. I met with a former  Chief who educated me from his peoples point of view the impact of colonization, 60's scoop and residential schools on his people. Eventually I met Peter's sister Marilyn who shared with me the stories of her family and child hood in cycles of violence and addiction.

This was a journey of seeing the 'other' and learning how to  make peace with the grief, loss and suffering - which plagues all of us in our human experience.  Marilyn and I have shared our stories together in many communities since 2015.

All of the above is a real life story confirmed by news items and other information:

Sheila Salter dominated headlines in December 1995.

The 42-year-old wife and mother of three was abducted about 8:15 a.m. Dec. 7 from the ground floor of a parkade at 124th Street and 112th Avenue, under her office, as she arrived at work as an employment consultant. A man waiting in the lobby of the building for a basement barber’s shop to open heard a woman screaming about 8:30 a.m.

Her briefcase and earrings were later found on the floor of the parkade along with a pair of man’s gloves. Police also found splatters of blood on the floor and on the side of a car parked in the next stall.

Salter’s Chevy Blazer was found abandoned 10 hours later outside a downtown apartment building, its interior covered in blood, leading police to believe she was dead.

The search for Salter lasted 10 days. Her frozen, naked body was found in an abandoned farmhouse near Chipman, 76 km east of Edmonton.
[…]
Police immediately issued a Canada-wide warrant for 34-year-old Peter John Brighteyes, who they charged with first-degree murder in Salter’s death.

The manhunt ended four days later when Brighteyes walked into the Beverly community police station in Edmonton. He was then formally charged.
[…]
During Brighteyes’s murder trial, court heard Salter had desperately fought off her knife-wielding attacker in the parkade before a bone-deep slash to the neck severed her voice box and the artery that carries blood to the brain. That caused her death.

She was sexually assaulted in the cargo area of her truck.

One of his former girlfriends testified Brighteyes left her apartment angry and sexually unsatisfied the morning Salter was abducted and slain, one block away.

Brighteyes was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The day after arriving at the maximum-security Edmonton Institution to begin serving his sentence, Brighteyes hanged himself with his shoelaces on April 25, 1997.

Other relevant links:

http://waywardhealer.blogspot.com/2013/11/re-visiting-trauma.html
https://maloff.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/a-promise-of-salt-by-lorie-miseck/
https://www.spjournal.com/article/circle-opens-story-of-healing-20150609

[Sparks]

This is deeply disturbing to me and I am actually going to reach out to the Band & Council of Saddle Lake. Even though she claims she went out and spoke with the community, why are all of her "spiritual teachings" coming from places like Peru and Mexico? Why didn't she bother to get more in touch with that community and learn THEIR spiritual teachings, medicines, ceremonies etc?

My bolding in the quote. To me these are disturbing questions. I have been a member of this forum for more than 12 years, and I have noticed that what the veterans in here think is most disturbing is when outsiders are allowed to participate in indigenous ceremonies and rituals, and then going public and trying to make a living of imitating them. Authentic medicine people training outsiders and receiving money for that is also frowned upon.

The protection of our First Nation sovereignty, histories, ceremonies and peoples is deeply important to me.!

I find your questions even more disturbing when I read the above quote in your introduction post. But maybe, are (some) First Nations in Canada more lenient towards such cultural appropriations than Native American Nations of the United States?

[KeepRiel]

I find your questions even more disturbing when I read the above quote in your introduction post. But maybe, are (some) First Nations in Canada more lenient towards such cultural appropriations than Native American Nations of the United States?

The FN communities in Canada are strongly against cultural appropriation. This doesn't seem to matter, a lot of the time we are dismissed by the general public. Our government is in a mess as always, Trudeau is currently involved in a scam with the -only- female Indigenous Attorney General in our history. Right now Indigenous rights and Climate change action are against the liberal party's agenda. This is creating more divide among First Nations and 'Canadians.' There is a growing movement of support in regards to reconciliation, but it has been a slow process.

We don't have any contemporary laws (like The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 for example) that deter people from doing these types of things. I did attempt to reach out to Marylin Brighteyes, the sister of Peter Brighteyes, but she declined to comment. The two of them will be speaking at a Keynote trauma conference (it costs 329$ just to attend). Although Marylin claims that they are friends (I don't doubt that) I still find it all very disturbing that they are speaking to others about healing. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/into-the-heart-of-trauma-tickets-55682524931

Trauma as Medicine - the Conversation Begins, Sarah Salter Kelly & Marilyn Brighteyes

Why wouldn't they have reached out to the elders and spiritual leaders within Saddle Lake? Events like these ripple out and effect everyone. This could have been a real moment of understanding and reconciliation - instead Sarah just seems to have went off the New Age deep-end.

[KeepRiel]

I have a few more developments. Myself and a couple of other activists questioned her on social media. We were pretty respectful but also firmly concerned. She deleted the thread before I could take a full screenshot of all our comments, however I have posted my initial inquiry below. I logged in on a different account and questioned her a final time. I believe a few others messaged her as well, but she is still declining to comment.

[Sparks]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_shaman

The Wikipedia article you used is a good one, with many excellent links and references.

One of the two "External links" is to http://www.newagefraud.org/.