Hei everyone,
I was posting on the Shaman's Portal in regards to how it's pretty much white skinned, mainstream people who claim that white people should never be challenged on declaring themselves shaman. You can view the thread here:
http://shamanportal.org/forum/shamanism-f1/shamans-must-be-from-indigenous-cultures-t949.html There is this user who is Scottish but apparently went all the way to Siberia in order to study be a shaman. I politely asked, among other things, why he felt he couldn't become a shaman (or spirit worker) in reference to his own culture so that he wouldn't be responsible for cultural appropriation from a white skinned mainstream colonizer role onto the back of an Indigenous culture.
Anyway, as you can read from the link to the thread, this guy totally flipped out on me, asking how dare I challenge his right to become a shaman in any culture that he so chooses and it is his right to choose.
So I wrote back: "The arrogance and hypocrisy here is someone from a mainstream culture like yourself shouting that ‘no one has the right to tell me if I can be a shaman or not’ when in fact it was the white colonial powers such as the United Kingdom that perpetuated a genocide against Indigenous peoples throughout history for practicing their spirituality. And now you claim to raise the same concerns of the people who were killed off or culturally neutralized.
Yes, Indigenous cultures died either protecting their sacred ceremonies and customs or died because they choose to perform those sacred customs instead of being assimilated.
So spare me your righteous indignation about how you were given the ability to study under another Indigenous culture when you should be grateful that that Indigenous culture even exists in the first place and wasn’t killed off by religious fervor or colonialist Russia. You got to choose to follow this path. But for Indigenous people, spirituality is not about choice or a whim decision; it is inseparable from their culture (and death results when they are separated from their culture).
So instead of your righteous indignation and your concept of privilege, how you have the right to do this and consume that, you should be grateful.
Other posters on this thread have shown the truth of their character through their gratitude and humbleness. And their understanding that cultural appropriation just because you can, doesn't make it right."
Now maybe my tone of response was a little harsh but I am getting sick and tired of people who are from a dominant culture freaking out about how it is their rights and privilege (at the expense of others) to steal or at least culturally appropriate the spirituality of another (often marginalized) culture -- which again just repeats the toxicity of colonization. They just seem clueless, though, and make their arguement all about them and their individual need for spiritual enlightenment, sparing no expense regarding who they steal from. It just makes me so frustrated.
