Stu, thanks for adding what you know. I'd like to ask you some more things about your experience.
You say you were "guided through smeo experiences" by Rettig. What exactly does that mean? Were you treated for addiction to methamphetamines? Because that's what both Rettig and Seri elders claim their traditional medicine can do.
I have no problem believing such traditions can cure meth addiction. It's a drug that's ravaged Native people in the US, Latin America, and non-Natives, mostly poor rural whites in the US. Peyote ceremonies have cured or help cure other addictions, as have sweatlodges.
But if you took the traditional medicines with Rettig as some kind of personal search, or worse, idle curiosity, that's deeply disturbing and an abuse and misuse of the medicine. Native ceremonies get badly abused when taken out of their context. It's spiritual tourism and dilettantism of the worst kind. It's equivalent to going through Catholic or Jewish or any other spiritual tradition just because you think "it'd be cool." A Native spiritual experience is not to be sought after like a ski trip to Aspen.
The endorsement of Rettig rings phony in so many ways. An entire people don't give an endorsement. There's no names on the doc, no council or tribal gov't. It's like all the white fantasies of being adopted by a tribe.
Rettig not knowing what Seri leaders are called is telling. Elsewhere he also lumps them in together with Yaqui, an unrelated people culturally. I haven't been able to find any online references to a "Seri king" except in the very first Spanish contact, and in docs on an unrelated Seri people in Asia.
He seems less than serious because of his associations. If he were truly seeking to integrate Seri medicine into the treatment of drug addictions, he'd be at academic and medical conferences. Instead he runs off to speak to the flakes at Burning Man. He runs around Europe talking to groups of people who think enlightenment can come from a chemical quick fix.
He also presents himself as a healer, the toad prophet. And performs ceremonies like this.
http://physicswikis.com/meth_molecule/Dr__Octavio_Rettig_on_Salt_Spring_Island/27098/And apparently people go to him just to get high, as this guy described, who later added valium to the experience.
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=64587This reporter also got high with him, just for the experience.
http://www.disclose.tv/forum/the-toad-prophet-t104773.htmlA number of things are obvious from that video. Rettig is actually endorsed by one elder, Don Pancho. And the elder and other Seris seems unaware of how Rettig is marketing himself and the medicine and ceremonies. The Seris are extremely isolated, and don't know Rettig's mostly talking to recreational drug users rather than medical professionals.
Another non-Native doctor, a gynecologist Gerardo Sandoval Isaacs, claims to be Rettig's true mentor and himself a ceremony performer.
http://www.lorenzohagerty.com/blog/september-21-2014-peoples-climate-march-nyc/It's also worth noting that Rettig elsewhere is listed as a surgeon, not a pharmacologist or any other specialist in medicinal research.
