I am the author of Profiles in Wisdom: Native Elders Speak About the Earth. I am dismayed to find that this web site contains puerile insults, and unsubstantiated allegations against people, in particular AmyLee, and that my book has been unlawfully plagiarized in an effort to defame her.
You did not seek my permission to copy and publish a chapter from my book, Profiles in Wisdom, and I fail to see how my work is in any way relevant or supportive of the disrespectful, juvenile, jealous rage that characterizes some of the posts on this web page. You do a great disservice to AmyLee, and to the thousands of women and men who have benefited from knowing her. Further, you insult all women by using the phrase ‘douche’ in an attempt to insult one woman. Pointlessly.
I have known AmyLee since the late 1980s. I respect and I admire her. I have seen her conduct herself with honor, empowering women and men with intelligence, depth, generosity of spirit, and relevancy.
My late wife, was a mature, wise woman, and also a shrewd judge of character. She participated in the Shields circle, which she found to be of great personal value. She also came to respect and admire AmyLee after the year of profound work with a large circle of other strong, independent, intelligent women. I further note that the “price-tag??? for this gift was NOT the posted $300-$400 but a sliding scale between $25 and $35 to cover the year’s mailings.
I read on this web page that Ms. Rose Garcia is operating under one of many conflicting legal interpretations of the Fair Use rule as she takes my work, without asking me, in a effort to insult, degrade and defame AmyLee. That is immoral and wrong.
The courts continue to challenge and refine the interpretations Ms. Garcia is claiming are somehow fair, legal, and acceptable.
Whether or not Ms. Rose Garcia’s decision to reprint a chapter from my book is legally actionable, I am certain reasonable people agree that ASKING the AUTHOR’S PERMISSION to reprint large excerpts from copyright protected work is the polite and correct thing to do.
To protect you from litigation, on at least this issue, I, the Author and Copyright holder for Profiles in Wisdom, have decided to grant you, Ms. Rose Garcia, permission to post or otherwise copy and disseminate Chapter 11 of my book CONDITIONAL to the following restrictions:
1. The ENTIRE chapter 11 must be uploaded and posted or otherwise disseminated and
2. ALWAYS with the following preface*
3. Any deviation from this request will be considered a violation of my terms and subject you to potential legal repercussions.
4. Further, ALL derogatory cartoons aimed at AmyLee MUST be immediately removed from any site which also features my copyright protected work.
I want you to know that including the following new Preface to Chapter 11 in all reprints by Ms. Rose Garcia is mandatory. If you are going to take my work, and use it on this web page in effort to defame someone I admire, you must include my new preface.
The terms of use that I am granting to Ms. Rose Garcia expire October 15, 2008. Removal of all online posting of my work by Ms. Garcia must take place at that time.
Ignoring Author’s terms:
• Be it by refusing to remove offensive cartoons aimed at defaming AmyLee,
• Be it by omitting pages thereby not offering to readers the ENTIRE chapter 11 in full context,
• Be it by not prefacing any and all re-prints, electronic or otherwise, with the following MANDATORY new PREFACE,
• Be it by exceeding the stated expiration date of permission,
may result in legal action against Ms. Garcia as well as against those hosting the sites featuring or linking the posts in violation. Non-acceptance of any of the set forth terms constitutes a willful violation, by Ms. Garcia, of the Author’s and Copyright holder’s reasonable requests and limits on electronic or other reproduction.
The following preface MUST immediately, this date of 1 October 2008, be added to any electronic reprint of Chapter 11 in Profiles in Wisdom:
Author’s Preface – October 1, 2008
“The second Edition of Profiles in Wisdom does not feature any changes to the original interview chapters. While interviewees, including AmyLee, inquired about changes, corrections, and additions, that was, regrettably, outside the scope of the publisher.
That corrections and updates could not be made is indeed unfortunate, for having read defamatory posts based on misinterpretations of my book, and false characterization of AmyLee, I can assure readers that a revised edition would have eliminated the occasion for such libelous speculation.
Example: It was not AmyLee’s choice to be called a Medicine Woman at that premature age. It was an error often made the same way Native men were presumptuously mislabeled “Chief??? by those who intended no disrespect – indeed, often intended quite the opposite. She spoke candidly, telling me that she would not even be eligible to be seriously considered for the title until reaching a certain milestone of maturity.
I explained this point clearly in the Introduction to Profiles in Wisdom when I wrote the book, so that no one could possibly misunderstand. That paragraph is in all editions, as fair-minded people will note. When I interviewed, and otherwise observed AmyLee, she presented herself solely as a representative for her own “lineage,??? further defined as “her own immediate family??? and not as an emissary for any tribe, clan, nation or group beyond that family.
For more than 27 years, AmyLee has actively carried four state and federal permits that officially license her in Wildlife Rescue, Rehabilitation, Scientifics and Education. She has earned her designation as a “Modern Day Medicine Woman in service of Wildlife.
I congratulate her and we all can thank her for her dedication to our winged and animal relations.
As was true many, long years ago when I interviewed her for my book, I recognize in AmyLee the qualities of a spiritual elder. Over the course of my life I have been privileged to know, literally, hundreds of spiritual elders, many with deep, authentic roots in native ways. It has been the subject of my work. AmyLee stood among these cultural treasures back in the 1980s and 1990s when, at the urging of her elders, she stepped out of her cocoon and began to share with the people at a time of obviously impending earth changes. She remains standing in her integrity.
In my view being a spiritual elder has little to do with age. Rather, it has to do with having the character to resist lower-self temptations such as envy, jealousy, anger, hatred, resentment, and calumny, and instead embodying love, respect, wisdom, generosity of spirit and the grace to act in life with dignity and integrity.
I recognize now, as I did then, the qualities of a spiritual elder in AmyLee. I hope she will again spread her wings and carry her messages outward bound. The need for wisdom and integrity is great.
I must also affirm that AmyLee has freely gifted her time and energy to many venues, including to those women with whom she studied nature’s “Shields??? – all without personal monetary remuneration and most especially without remuneration when involving “ceremony.
It was clear that the Elders and Teachers who sent AmyLee out into the world to share also supported her journey, many times accompanying her with a sense of pride. It was those very Elders who encouraged her to consent to my interview for Profiles in Wisdom.
There are segments of her chapter that I know AmyLee would have revised including lessening the focus on herself to highlight the wisdom of her Elders. It was my choice, as author, to focus on the innate wisdom I perceived in AmyLee herself.
If publishing limitations had permitted, the second edition would have featured an update on AmyLee’s efforts to bring education and peaceful resolution to the sensitive issue of cultural appropriation – an extension of the well documented work she did in the 1970’s and 1980’s exposing racism in its many insidious forms.
While I understand the natural world is a better place for having AmyLee tend injured and recovering animals, I am far from alone in inviting her back to public life among the human beings to fill the important void of conscience and consciousness made by her absence.
One poster on this web-page wrote accurately and powerfully of how AmyLee took an ethical stand in the 1990s at one of the Bear Tribe Medicine Wheel Gatherings in New York after several women came to her to complain of sexual improprieties involving other people. I can confirm that AmyLee took an immediate and courageous stand on behalf of all the women. She confronted the leaders and the accused, she demanded justice, and she then severed her ties with the gathering. I was there. I saw her tears of sorrow after she met with the women, and then I saw her strength, determination, clarity, and wisdom in confronting the situation. She made a big difference. Things changed after AmyLee stepped forward, and her subsequent principled departure from the gathering.
Finally, for any and all errors or omissions I may have unknowingly made in Profiles in Wisdom, I apologize to both AmyLee and to my readers.
- AUTHOR, Profiles in Wisdom
October 1, 2008
