I just took a look at Marlon / John Lekay's Heyoka magazine, and I see he is now using his magazine to try to discredit NAFPS , the information we provide here, and he is specifically trying to discredit educatedindian AKA Al Carroll .
This seems so blatently malicious , I am really appauled .
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:RHpS6mzi9sEJ:www.heyokamagazine.com/HEYOKA.8.IsALCarrolAFraud.htm+Heyoka+%22
Al+Carroll%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=caIn my opinion , the Heyoka magazine is turning out to be an example of biased reporting , at it's finest .
For people who haven't kept track of the dialog , this thread was first posted under the title " Is this disturbing?" .
Initially , there was some concerns expressed about some of the content of *some* of the on line Heyoka magazine .
In reply # 2 educatedindian acknowledged where this magazine seemed to be doing good , but questioned some of the people who were being promoted through being given public exposure. These comments were not unreasonable .
Several months later John Lekay came here , and started a thread on Thomas Lighteningbolt , and Lekay asked what we thought of Thomas.
Lekay was told , within the norms of Native culture, that the way Lightening bolt was talking about some things , didn't seem right , and we tried to explain why .
It is hard to demonstrate cultural norms on line , but here is one comment which is a good example of what we tried to explain .
http://www.ammsa.com/buffalospirit/February-2000/adviceonpowwowtrail.htmlBoye G. Ladd
Many times I have seen individuals "showing off" their sundance scars, tobacco ties or amulets hanging around their necks - exposed. When a person carries protection and/or medicine, it should always be hidden and never be spoken about.
Spiritual leaders and medicine men should be considered in the same light. For the true and sincere, their reverence is based on humbleness, dedication and sacrifice. Anytime someone stands before you and claims to be a medicine man, do not believe him or anything he says, because he or she has desecrated their oath of humbleness. You will not find a true and sincere spiritual leader or medicine man teaching in a school or university, or seeking public attention.
Lekay would not accept our explanations of why something felt 'off', and for every explaination we gave, he would find some
incident of public display which may have occured in an unusual context , and he insisted if we didn't think this was normal, it was just us being unfair .
Lekay has repeatedly dismissed what Native people and Elders have to say on this , as just opinions and gossip .
Then Lekay began insisting we were being unfair to disagree with LBW's apparent self proclaimed Spiritual leadership of the Lakota people, and suggested if we didn't stop disputing her claims , we risked getting sued .
As far as I can tell , LBW's claims which Lekay seems so determined to defend , are based on a overwhelming collection of often unrelated facts and stories, which LBW has stitched together with nothing more than her own guess work and wishful thinking . As I pointed out in the thread "Dupree part 2" , many of her statements would appear to contradict themselves. The bottom line is , LBW's believes that the Lakota people had too many problems , to have their Spiritual leaders actually live within the Lakota Nation . She believes this authority was passed to her because she lives outside the Lakota community and she will protect Lakota Spiritual traditions from the evils and incompetance of the Lakota people and community . If the Lakota people don't support her aspiritions , she just hints that it is the incompetance and corruption of the Lakota people that is the reason .
In spite of the fact we all seem to agree it is not right for anyone to declare themselves the Spiritual leader of the Lakota people , without substanial support and recognition from within the Lakota community , and in spite of the fact that requests for the names of any Lakota Elders who might support LBW's claims have been ignored , Lekay has used his online media resources to give one sided support to LBW , and to discredit anyone who dares to support the generally recognized Spiritul authoritites within the Lakota Nation.
In my opinion , Educated indian and Barnaby have repeatedly done Mr lekay a great favour , by edititng the most outrageous and nasty comments out of his posts , though a scaled down version of them , as evidence ,still remain . I saw no brilliant points removed as Mr Lekay is claiming . Just an amazing amount of disrespect . Why is mr Lekay acting like this ?
It seems Lekay is now imagining it is Al who thought up the guidelines , and cultural norms we repeatedly try and explain to people through this message board. It seems Mr Lekay believes if he can discredit Al , he will also discredit the widely held values and social norms of Indians in general , which for some reason seem to cause him discomfort .
So Mr Lekay, as you really seem to be having a hard time understanding that we are not a hate group and Al is not what I
would consider a suspicious person , perhaps you will consider the following ;
First off , as I understand it , people posting in NAFPS are generally opposed to ;
1. People degrading and trivializing indiginous Spiritual traditions by using them as nothing more than an exotic commercial commodity.
2. People degrading and trivializing indiginous Spiritual traditions through selecting parts of these traditons and using them out of the context of the balance provided by a deeply rooted knowledgeable Native community .
3. People claiming they are qualified and authorized to this , when the generally recognized Spiritual authorities within a Native community , do not feel it is a good idea for these traditions to be used in this way .
4 People who gain peoples trust by making these unfounded claims to Spiritual authority when they are not recognized as qualified , by a deeply rooted knowledgable Native community .
5. People who are not members of deeply rooted knowledgeable Native communities recognizing and empowering people as indiginous Spiritual authorities, who are unqualified , or dishonest , or delusional , or exploitive of traditional practices.
When people posting in NAFPS point out that the authority that comes from within Native communities is not being respected , or that a person is misrepresenting themselves as having this authority , or the traditions are being distorted and degraded ,as I understand it , the general concern is to preserve the authority of knowledgeable recognized Spiritual leaders within Native communities , which in turn protects the intgrity and potency of these traditions for future generations .
The maintence of the systemic wisdom inherent in these communites , does and will benifit all mankind .
Most Native people understand that it is not necessary to be leading or even personally participating in a ceremony in order to benifit from it . It is only the non native emphasis on the importance of the individual , that assumes everybody needs to have the opprotunity to personally have or experince a central role in everything .
The damage done to indiginous communities and non indiginous peoples who get involved with these unqualified self proclaimed
Spiritual authorities is very real. Because many of the people posting here have seen this damage , first hand , most the people posting in NAFPS don't like exploiters and frauds.
It has been a common colonization tactic to recognize and promote people as having authority within the nation that is being colonized , only because it suits the purposes of the colonizer .
As indiginous peoples have gone through 500 years of this already , seeing this disrespectful behavior repeated , does make some people angry . To suggest people who have been wronged , are guilty for their own feelings of outrage, and if they organize any resistance to their authority being further undermined , they are a "hate group " only furthers the injustice .
