I hope my post gets posted. It seems to be a fine thing to go after frauds, and I applaud the valid research many of you have done and continue to do so. But it is another to go after each other. It is like hunting for food. It is fine to go hunt something other than yourself but when you start to eat yourself because you are hungry there is definitely a problem.
Disagreements happen even when people have a lot in common , and as long as people do their best to tell the truth , and be polite, I think thats OK. Some of the issues discussed here are really complex and can go to the heart of how peoples define their idenitiy. Even if the discussions can get on the passionate side, it's probably good that they happen, and that we force each other to consider things from a different angle.
Exploitation and fraud create problems no matter if the person doing this is a friend or stranger, and i don't agree that these problems should only be addressed if we don't like the person creating them. That approach would not be fair. I also don't think we have to disagree with everything someone is doing, before anything can be said about something specific someone is doing. Using an analogy, it's like if someone was active in their community opposing violence against women, that wouldn't mean it's OK if this same person beats their dog. I also don't think that just because someone denounces people who sell ceremonies that gives them a right to exploit another aspect of the culture or some watered down aspect of their own heritage.
So yes sometimes stuff comes up and people who are members of NAFPS and doing good things in some areas do get questioned and other NAFPS members may strongly disagree with what they are doing. Calling that "going after our own" sounds very melodramatic. I honestly have never seen any member of NAFPS eat another human being . But it does sound like a cause for concern when said in that way.
Personally i don't mind if people want to disagree with something i say... As long as it is something I actually said...
From a thread you posted in earlier today...
Henry Niese
« Reply #8
found
(begins...) it did not seem polite to ask directly when I was guest.
Asking is necessary if we are going to avoid supporting frauds, and as long as people support them, there will be people tempted to take advantage. If someone is trustworthy they will understand why you are asking and shouldn't feel offended. If they are offended, IMO that in itself is a BIG red flag.
MikePutfus
Where I come from Federica it's an insult to ask information like this from a person. Yet it is something we do when we introduce our self's
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Hi Mike... I guess relationships on the internet is kind of different than real life and it can be hard to find a balance between maintaining a degree of personal privacy or anonymousness, and when that turns into making claims that can't be verified that involve the public trust. If we all knew each other in a real life Native community , our community would inform us if what someone was claiming was untrue. On line, or in the New Age market place, direct questions are often necessary if people don't want to support people making fraudulent claims .... As you can see people here don't always agree on where that balance is, or how best to go about this.
But in my opinion all discussion is good ...
