What are the ethical issues raised by cultural appropriation?
Eassy by David Michael Boje, Ph.D. 
May 16, 2023

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ABSTRACT
Between 2012  and 2023 I enrolled and completed Michael Harner's workshops, weekend intensives, and experimental courses in shamanic training. I withdrew in May 2023. It became increasingly clear that the Forudant for Shamanic Studies (FSS) does engage in cultural appropriation of Indigenous Ways of Knowing (IWOK) and Native spiritual practices. FSS direcly engages in commodification of Shamanism by its training programs in ways that raises important ethical issues.  Michael Harner's 'core shamanism' as taught in fairly expensive 1, 2 and 5-day training seminars, in-person and on Zoom by the FSS, over the decade amounted to $10,000.

INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

What is being appropriated?

Harnerism is recruited as part of a wider New Age movement to appropriate IWOK into simplified Western Ways of Knowing (WWOK). Harnerism is not alone in this enterprise of FSS to commodify approprated IWOK and resell it to practitioners as 'do it your self' method, who in turn sell services to their clients. Berger has a salient critique of this process of commodification.

We apply Gilles Deleuze (1990) The Logic of Sense to this issue.

Michal Harner the anthropologist created 'core shamanism' which in Deleuzean terms is a pantomime, an anthropologist copying highly complex and diverse Indigenous Ways of Knowing (IWOK) and reconstructing them selectively into Western Ways of Knowing (WWOK).  Enthinkment proceeds by fits and starts, hesitations and bifurcations, and by mimicry. 

Boje in the video  calls the fall of shamanism into its pervers universalistic form a, the static and frozen moments of Harnerism.



As such the relevance of this exploration of cultural appropriation in Harnerism is how enthinkment differentiations in a sequences of making copies of a copy.

Harnerism takes this a step further. Harner founded the Foundation of Shamanic Studies (FSS).  FSS is a non-profit corporation engaged in mimicry of IWOK shamanic practices around the world. The mimicry is highly selective. For example Chakras and energy work is not part of Harnerism. Reincarnation is considered outside Harnerism. 

Antrhpology's transgression of core shamanism becomes its own theology, a belief system about purifying IWOK into WWOK. IWOK shamanic practices are mimicked as a set of differentiation and disjunction, a pantomime par excellence that becomes an Othering of IWOK shamanism. 

Gilles Deleuze summarizes this process of mimicry in three phases.

1) Doubling - creating practices for resale that are the universalizing double of local indigenous practices.

2) Dividing - differentiation the IWOK shamanic practices from the purified WWOK Harnerism shamanic practices.

3) Multiplying - by commodification, packaging and reselling the WWOK shamanic practices in exchange for paid tuition to practitioners who set up their own non-profit counseling and consulting businesses, who service clients.  Thus the movement of a copy of a copy of a copy of Native or IWOK is refined into universalizing.

“Shamans in traditional society have always practiced there techniques within a larger spiritual framework: (Berger, 2005: 1)

“Some non-Native American Shamans and some branches of New Age believe their techniques can be separated from a larger spiritual cosmology that relies on tapping into natural sources that have been overlooked by science” (Berger, 2005: 1).

This is what is happening in my autoethnographic experience of some buy not all of the Harnerism 'core shamanism' Foundation for Shamanic Studies  (FSS) workshops.

Need for reflection about Qshamanism
 
Lest we fall into the same commodificaiton and simplification trap. The danger of such cultural appropriation applies to the ‘new physics’, that shamanism can ultimately be explained by quantum physics.  So we at Qshamanism.com have to be quite careful to not join the complicity.

In the wider movement, Urban Shamans engage in a form of cultural imperialism (post-colonial formation of the world standard practices). Urban Shamanism is influences by cultural appropriation of Native American spirituality. The focus is on similarities, while ignoring differences. This brings about Othering. In sum, the exemplar and leading edge of American Shamanis movement is Harnerism.

“American Shamans are more concerned with techniques of power and control, and less concerned with the larger spiritual system from which these techniques are taken” (Berger, 2005: 3).

What is Native Spiritual Cultural Appropriation?

The taking from a culture that is no one’s own, of intellectual property, cultural expressions or artifacts, history and ways of knowledge (Ziff and Rao 1997: 1) as cited in Moller (2012: i).

Increasingly, Native authors are challenging the status quo of the path of colonization, and spiritual appropriation of Indigenous Ways of Knowing (IWOK) being assimilated and ‘owned’ by  Western Ways of Knowing (WWOK) of neo-shamanism (aka New Age shamanism).  Appropriation of indigenous (native) ceremonies, rituals and sacred beliefs continues the path of colonization in academic and non-academic writing, and the sharing practices in WWOK shamanic workshops.

This spiritual appropriation is also new-colonialism, as user/practitioners ignore the cultural context and history of spiritual healing practices transforms into an enchantment or exotic Otherness (Moller, 2012: 1). 

“Spiritual appropriation is used as a political tool to come to terms with the process of colonization and to reconstruct an identity of their choosing” (Moller, 2012: 2).

Modern consumer society has an appetite for neo-shamanism, in popularity of contemporary quest of spirituality and shamanism. Michael Harner, Carlos Castaneda,  and Mircea Elide h”have certainly helped in bringing shamanism to popular and mass culture by mystifying the exotic knowledge as valid and authentic”  (Moller, 2012: 6). Harner’s FSS attracts through claims of ‘secret knowledge, magical knowledge, powerful knowledge’ (IBID.).

Harner’s FSS (aka Harnerism) uses universal techniques to train shamanism. Receiving ‘special knowledge from the spirits’ [power animals & guides] in Harner workshops. FSS viaHarner claims special authenticity. In Harner's anthropological study of the Native person’s practices and his own personal journey experiences (autoethnography).  Having studied anthropology at the university lends credibility. Harner’s personal experiences add a validity for readers of his books that the standard for shamanic training is set. Harner makes his personal experiences equivalent to science experiment (see Harner, 1990: xii).  Then comes the claim that with FSS training in Harner’s experiments, a practitioner can achieve in a few hours experiences that have taken IWOK many years of meditation, pray, apprenticeship, and initiation (Harner, 1990: xii).

Harner (1980) Way of the Shaman, is described as a “di it yourself” book to learn ‘core shamanism’ techniques of the universal shaman. Thispursut of ‘core shamanism’ continues in Harner (1990: xii) book. Shamanic States of Consciousness (SS) is safer that dreaming, and more effective than Buddhist meditation or prayers of Catholicism (Moller, 2012: 24).

Quick Spirituality

Quick Spirituality is defined as taking a few courses, reading the Harner books, without the time consuming apprenticeships of IWOK (Moller, 2012: 45). Most of the historical and cultural context is not covered in the FSS training.  For example, I (Boje) went through a training in the three-year program, where a copy of an anthropology journal article was circulated, and we we asked to do the ceremony described as a three hour homework assignment, and to not tell anyone, to keep the practice secret, and never reveal it to anyone but the cohort and FSS instructor. This is an act of published anthropological research and ethnographic, appropriation. We could look at the article for a few minutes then pass it to the next person. Some took longer looks. I obtained a copy and read it thoroughly, did the ritual, but knew something was over-simplifying about the FSS version of a sacred initiation ritual of another culture.

Harner (1990” xiv)) defends WWOK people practicing shamanism. “… these new practitioners are not ‘playing Indian' are going to the same revelatory spiritual sources that tribal shamans have traveled to form time immemorial. They are not pretending to be shamans…. Their experiences are genuine.”

How is this not spiritual appropriation of Native spirituality?

Various shamanism traditions of varied cultures are synthesized into Quick Spirituality.  But a ceremony contuded in the IWOK by a Native person, and one conducted by 'Quick Shaman' practitioners and FSS teachers differs in two ways. Firs it safety. Natives use caution are are more away are dangers. Second, there are differences in protocol.

What are the ethical issues raised by cultural appropriation?

“The suppression and transformation of the heterogeneous reality of indigenous
societies by the imaginings of the Euro-American dominant, has many ethical implications, as does cultural appropriation in a situation of major power differentials. Native communities are becoming increasingly outspoken in their opposition to the practice of Indian, or pseudo-Indian, religions by non-Natives” (Smith-Nolan, 1994: i).

“New Age Native American spiritualists, in general, feel that the continued survival of the planet rests in an overhaul of Western identities and a global acceptance of the ideologies and spiritual practices of indigenous peoples, who are defined as being close to the earth, and therefore, directly linked with the sacredness of the planet…” (Smith-Nolan, 1994: 38).

Shamanism refers to indigenous practices to be found among triable peoples of Siberia, particularly within the Tungus or Evenki communities” (York, 2005: 8). The shamanic designation has expanded and extended to ethnic practices found worldwide among North and South American Indians, African tribalisms, Australian Aborigines,Polynesian peoples, and so on that have an animistic worldview.  This has accelerated with the work of Romanian scholar Mircea Eliade, and American anthropologist Michael Harner.

Harner’s (1973, Way of the Shaman) is based on his ethnographic work in South American.  In time, he developed the concept of ‘core shamanism.’  Harner-based shamanism (core shamanism) is recognized as among the leading motifs informing the North American New Age movement (p. 92)  Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies (FSS) is an eclectic combination of shamanic journeying, quick and easy practices without study of the cultures from whcih they came, commercialization of indigenous (Native) cultural spiritaual practices.

Harner’s (1973, 1982) initial work involved different hallucinogenic substances such as the consumption of Latin American ayahuasca. 

It is Carlos Castaneda that set the contemporary framework for Shamanic pursuit within North America. To a less extent Harner’s FSS (core shamanism).

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Key References

Berger, Hellen A. (2005, editor) Witchcraft and Magic: Contemporary North America. Philadelphia, PN: University of Pennsylvania Press. (More Click Here).

Deleuze, Gilles (1990). The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester  wit Charles Sivale. Edited Y Constantin V. Boundas.  NY: Columbia University Press.

Eliade, Mircea (1964) Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. NJ: Princeton University Press. 


Harner, Michael J. (1980) The Way of the Shaman: A Guide to Power and Healing. NY: Bantam. 2nd edition 1982.

Harner, Michael J. (1973) Hallucinogens and Shamanism. NY: Oxford University Press.

Harner, Michael J. (1990) Cave and Cosmos.

Moller, F. E. (2012). Native Spiritual Appropriation: Words of Power, Relations of Power-Creating Stories & Identities. (More Click Here).

Smith-Nolan, M. K. (1994). Imagining them, reimagining ourselves: a case study of cultural appropriation and the politics of identity. Master of Arts in Applied Anthropology, June 7. Oregon Sate University.
 
York, Michael (2005) Witchcraft and Magic: Contemporary North America. Edited by Helen A. Berger.Philadelphia, PN University: of Pennsylvania Press.

 
Ziff, B. H., & Rao, P. V. (Eds.). (1997). Borrowed power: Essays on cultural appropriation. Rutgers University Press.