Actuallyn there are quite a few Native authors.
The books are not accurate. Looking at Merrifield's bio makes me very dubious he would know what he's talking about. He's basically a sculptor who presents himself as selling sacred arts. Claims Native heritage repeatedly and how sacred his work is, but one has to search find out just what he's claiming.
He claims some Cherokee heritage, that a great grandmother was on the Trail of Tears. Not very likely. I know a Cherokee law professor, Steve Russell, whose
great-great-great grandmother went on the Trail. Keep in mind the Trail was over 180 years ago, in 1838. A great grandmother probably wouldn't have been born til 1880 or so.
Then Merrifield went to "the northwest" to find his roots and learned with an unnamed tribe. Why not go to Cherokee people?
After a lot of searching, one can find the name of the tribe. He claims to be trained by the Crow, and to be an actual Crow medicine man. Pretty unlikely. Like we've seen with Brooke Edwards, they are very reluctant to even speak with outsiders. The idea of them making an outsider their medicine man? Please...
And then Merrifield wrote a fairly silly trilogy about White Buffalo Calf Woman, based on what he claims to know about Lakota belief. So try and follow this- a man with dubious claims of distant Cherokee heritage who went to the Crow and claims to be their medicine man is now setting himself up as an expert on Lakota traditions.
Even his name should set off alarm bells. Heyokas are sacred figures, clowns and contraries who do everything backwards. Him calling himself that as a first name strikes me as something most Natives from the Plains tribes would find disrespectful. I recall there were some in here angry at a Nuage magazine calling itself Heyoka.
Just looking at the summaries of his books make it obvious he doesn't know much. He claims White Buffalo Calf Woman (whom he calls simply White Buffalo Woman) appeared to the
Hopi. And he also claims White Buffalo Calf Woman came
from Europe. Obviously this is done to appeal to white Nuagers and sell more books.
