Appropriation of Native American Spirituality

Suzanne Owen, The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality (London; New York: Continuum, 2008) [The pages in this document do not match the published version] Chapter 1. Introduction: The Centrality of Protocols Native American and other indigenous religions pose questions about how we identify, categorise and define religions. One of the problems is categorising ‘indigenous’ as an ethnically-defined, marginalised people with a distinct language and culture, and that indigenous religions belong to ethnically-defined people. Thus we imply that these religions do not occur outside this group, or that they are no longer ‘Lakota’ or ‘Mi’kmaq’ when they appear in a different setting as the religions are altered in order to be incorporated into the new context. The political definition of ‘indigenous’ refers to ‘marginalised’ people. For Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith they are the ‘colonized peoples’ (1999: 7), a definition that excludes ‘indigenous’ Europeans. Although contemporary Druidry may be considered by some as indigenous, the people it belongs to are not, leading to the omission of white European expressions from the category ‘indigenous religions’. Therefore, the relationship between colonisation and the definition of ‘indigenous’ cannot be overlooked. The dichotomisation of ‘coloniser’ and ‘colonised’ implies mutually exclusive categories and, rather than challenge this aspect, many indigenous activists embrace the ethnic exclusivity of the term ‘indigenous’ and employ it in order to reclaim land and human rights that had been denied them on largely racial grounds in the first place. Native Americans and other indigenous peoples are also attempting to reclaim their religious traditions. Prominent Native American leaders and activists have reacted strongly to what they see as the misuse and commodification of their ‘spirituality’ by questioning the motive of all practices of and inquiry into their traditions, to the extent that the appropriation of their spiritual practices has been termed ‘neo-colonialism’. At the same time, they are employing an ethnic identity based on a criterion set by the colonisers, thereby taking on the language of the coloniser as a form of resistance. In June 1993, five hundred representatives of the Lakota, Nakota and Dakota Nations ratified a document entitled ‘Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality’, which I will also refer to as the Lakota Declaration (published in Churchill 1994: 273-277). For an on-line version and further references related to this document see Raymond Bucko’s website: http://puffin.creighton.edu/lakota/war.html. Written by Lakota activists from Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux Reservation, South Dakota, it outlines their concerns and proposes actions against ‘exploiters’. This document followed earlier statements made by Native American elders and has since been adopted and adapted by Chapters of the American Indian Movement, an influential national association of Native American activists, who have called upon their members to bring to a halt, by force if necessary, incidents of exploitation or appropriation of Native American spirituality. Ten years later, Arvol Looking Horse, the Nineteenth Generation Keeper of the Sacred Calf Pipe for the Lakota, issued a Proclamation prohibiting non-Native participation in Lakota ceremonies, which raises questions of ethnicity and authority in Lakota ceremonies. The main task of this book is to assess the issues raised by these two statements and the legitimacy of its arguments against non-Native appropriations of Lakota spiritual traditions. The reasons why the Lakota Declaration and the Looking Horse Proclamation are significant documents in the debates about appropriation are due to the prominence of Lakota models in representations of Native American spirituality. Although Lakota activists and other Native Americans have stated that non-Natives should be prohibited from participating in Native American religious traditions, when they delineate the points of complaint against them, it is the ignorance of protocol rather than their ethnicity that is the issue. Native Americans claim there is a difference between non-Native ‘appropriation’, conducted without authority beyond the ‘self’, and indigenous ‘sharing’ or ‘borrowing’, conducted according to an internal line of authority often expressed as collectively recognised protocols. Much of this difference comes down to the nature of the exchange of knowledge and the rules that govern it. Non-Natives have been accused of ‘commodifying’ traditional practices that do not belong to them, where approval or permission has not been granted by a recognised and respected teacher, elder or council. On the other hand, several non-Native practitioners do claim they have permission, at least from their teachers, but may be unaware of the importance of protocols that attend the practice or teaching. By their own admission, many Native Americans have shared ceremonies with non-Natives willingly, and many continue to do so, despite statements issued by concerned Lakota and members of the American Indian Movement demanding that they desist from sharing Native American practices with non-Natives. Earlier statements by Native Americans did not prohibit non-Native participation, as such, but warned about the misuse of the ceremonies and practices, which, they claim, are dangerous when not conducted in the right way. Therefore, protocols exist not only to preserve the integrity of a ceremony, but also to safeguard the individual practitioner’s physical and psychological well-being. The teacher-pupil means of transmission, sometimes in the form of an apprenticeship, not only enables the safe integration of experiences for the participants, through guidance and interpretation, but also the integration of the participants back within the community. Personal visions are not mentioned as a form of self-authentication, but, in a Lakota context, such visions would be discussed anyway with an elder and interpreted, thereby integrating the vision into that group. Recognising the difficulty in controlling the non-Native use of Lakota ceremonies, the Lakota Declaration and similar statements also target their own members who ‘sell’ Lakota ceremonies to anyone who is willing to pay. Whether or not particular persons have authority on these matters is another issue that is debated among them. Looking Horse and others acknowledge that Lakota played a part in the expropriation of their ceremonies, that their willingness to share ceremonies with other people and the lack of centralised authority has contributed to both a cultural domination of Lakota forms of religious expression and their appropriation by non-Natives. In recent debates among Lakota spiritual leaders, the main concern is not that only Native Americans can attend or perform ceremonies, but that the rules of ceremony are not being followed correctly, which are based mainly on precedent, but also by consensus of the group or the guardians of specific ceremonies. ‘Protocols’ are agreed codes of conduct, associated with Native American ceremonies, and act as criteria for participation where specific actions are expected or prohibited. Thus, for many Native American practitioners, protocols are more fundamental for governing the rules of participation over that of ethnicity. Protocols practised in ceremonies run by Native Americans or First Nations are usually absent in Native American-style ceremonies run in Europe, partly because such protocols are rarely cited in written documents or emphasised in ceremonies provided for a fee-paying public (in the form of workshops), and they are often at variance to so-called Western values (e.g. regarding gender roles) and considered inessential for the ceremony’s efficacy. The ‘insider’ considers protocol as an inseparable part of the ceremony and sometimes the failure of a ceremony would be put down to the absence or misapplication of a protocol, although a person’s intention may also be questioned. The non-Native (‘outsider’) may not even be aware of the crucial role protocols play, which may only become apparent through participation in ceremonies run by ‘insiders’ for their own communities. Land rights, the perceived misuse of Native American burial and ceremonial sites and ecological issues are not mentioned specifically in either the ‘Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality’ or Arvol Looking Horse’s Proclamation and so they will not be dealt with explicitly in this book, important as they are. See Robert Wallis (2003), which has a chapter on ‘sacred sites’ and neo-Shamanism (chapter 5), Bron Taylor (1997), Catherine L. Albanese (1990) and Jace Weaver (1996). The Lakota Declaration focuses on the exploitation and appropriation of Lakota religious or spiritual practices, which are difficult to address in a court of law where disputes over land use and environmental concerns are normally submitted. These latter cases can take years to settle and often the courts rule in favour of the developers, as we are in an age, Christopher Jocks laments, ‘represented by the supremacy of profitable use of land over profitless historical and spiritual value’ (Jocks 2004: 144). Native American activists and several scholars address appropriation of Native American spirituality as a further symptom of colonisation and argue that struggles over land and religion are inseparable. Native American ‘Ceremony’ and ‘Protocol’ Before proceeding, further explanations of the Native American use of the terms ‘ceremony’ and ‘protocol’ are necessary. Philip Arnold writes, as others have noted, that ‘there is no equivalent word for “religion” in most, if not all, pre-contact versions of Native American languages. There are equivalents such as “ceremony”…’ (2002: 337). Therefore, it is necessary to define ‘ceremony’ and the equally ubiquitous concept ‘protocol’ as they are understood by practitioners and to justify their use over etic equivalents, such as ‘ritual’ and ‘rules’ or ‘procedures’. I am surprised by the lack of scholarly comment on these two terms in their emic constructions, as they are widespread in Native American and First Nations usage. Discussions about ‘ceremony’ in the social sciences and religious studies are occupied with etic conceptions, often as a category in distinction to religious ritual or rites. Anthropologist Raymond Firth, for example (quoted in Grimes 2000c: 259-60), presents such a view: By ceremony I understand an interrelated set of actions with a social referent, and of a formal kind, that is, in which the form of the actions is regarded as being significant or important, though not valid or efficacious in itself. A rite, on the other hand, is also a set of actions, but the form in which these are carried out is regarded as having a validity or efficacy in itself, through some special quality which may conveniently be termed of a mystical order, that is, not of the workaday world. In some cases, when ‘ceremony’ appears in academic texts discussing Native American religious practice, explanations for the emic use of the term are absent or ‘ceremony’ is used interchangeably with ‘ritual’. Anthropologist Raymond Bucko’s otherwise excellent book on the Lakota sweat lodge is a case in point. After introducing the sweat lodge ‘ceremony’, Bucko continues to use the emic designation throughout, yet understands it as synonymous with ‘ritual’, illustrated in the following passage, which also refers to protocol by implication: ‘There is a general sense… that all rituals must be conducted in a certain manner. Personal and cosmic misfortune is often ascribed to carrying out a ceremony incorrectly or in an insincere manner’ (Bucko 1998: 119-120). Although Bucko uses the terms interchangeably, he does not explain the Lakota use of the term ‘ceremony’ over that of the anthropological term ‘ritual’. The reason for this trend is unstated, but it may be either a rejection of anthropological terminology in order to distance themselves from anthropological categories, which they will be well aware of, or because of its association with ‘religion’, namely Christianity. Although not completely absent from spoken use, the term ‘ritual’ may be perceived by many as too narrow a term as it is often defined as a set of prescribed actions, but in contemporary Native American contexts, the intent or attitude is also important. For example, Raymond Bucko was told by a Sun Dance leader ‘that it did not matter if everything done in this dance was performed incorrectly. What was essential was the inner attitude of the participants’ (Bucko 1998: 119). Other Lakota might not agree, such as Arvol Looking Horse, who, as Keeper of the Sacred Pipe – one of the most important roles among the Lakota – does emphasise correct practice (see Chapter 3). Raymond Bucko has pointed out to me that the term ‘ritual’ – and also ‘religion’ – is employed by some Lakota practitioners on Pine Ridge (from personal communication, 12 May 2008). While, in general, anthropologists and scholars of religions insist on treating the term ‘ceremony’ as a genre of ritual that belongs to the civil or political realm (as in marriage or inauguration ceremonies, see Bell 1997), if they discuss it at all, those working among Native Americans have missed the emic usages of it as religious practice. When translating Lakota, authors select the English term they believe to be closest to the meaning they want to elicit. The holy man Nicholas Black Elk, who spoke only in Lakota through various translators, talked at length about the heyoka ‘ceremony’ to the poet John Neihardt (1979: 188), whereas Joseph Epes Brown, an anthropologist, rendered Black Elk’s descriptions of ceremonies as ‘rites’ (Brown 1989). Like Raymond Bucko, Raymond DeMallie (1984: 84), in his anthropological study of Neihardt’s Black Elk books, uses etic and emic terms interchangeably, either assuming an equivalence or regarding ‘ceremony’ as a sub-category of ‘ritual’ without explanation; whereas Thomas Mails, an artist and writer, employed the emic term ‘ceremony’ from the beginning for his books about Frank Fools Crow, who, like his uncle, spoke almost entirely in Lakota. Fools Crow is introduced as the ‘Ceremonial Chief of the Teton Sioux’ (Mails 1979: 3, 9, etc.), and spoke of the sweat lodge as a ‘purification ceremony’ (Mails 1979: 49). The translators in both cases were Lakota who were fluent in both their own language and English. The pattern, judging by this limited sample, is for anthropologists to employ the term ‘rite’ or ‘ritual’, while poets and non-academic writers employ the term offered by the Lakota themselves when speaking in English: ‘ceremony’. Not one of them offers an explanation for their choice. Protocol is integral to Native American ceremonies and refers broadly to a combination of action and intent, but is located primarily in participants’ behaviour. Protocol governs all aspects of ceremonial life – as etiquette does for social interaction – among Native Americans that opt to define themselves as ‘traditional’. The choice of the term ‘protocol’ may originate from their experience in the armed forces, from the language used in some legal transactions or from the use of the term in formal ceremonies of state. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘protocol’ as ‘any code of conventional or proper conduct; formally correct behaviour.’ ‘Protocol’ http://dictionary.oed.com (08.01.06). In Native American usage, ‘protocol’ refers to more than etiquette, custom or social convention, for participants are usually warned that real harm or misfortune can befall the person who breaks or ignores certain protocols. Many protocols do resemble etiquette, that is rules or codes of behaviour followed out of respect to the community and do not bring misfortune if not adhered to, but may in some cases result in social exclusion. In the practice of protocol, behaviour is primary rather than intention, although the latter is queried if there is a problem despite correct procedure being followed. Raymond Bucko has found through his extensive fieldwork on the Lakota sweat lodge ceremony that ‘correct procedure’ is sought by practitioners for efficacy or because of precedent, e.g. the practitioner observed how the ceremony was done or learned it a certain way, or has read an account of the procedure. Sometimes visions inform the procedure, or simply pragmatics (Bucko 1998: 121). Not always named as such, ‘protocols’ are of central concern for traditional Native Americans, described at ceremonial gatherings such as the powwow and whenever the pipe is present, and it is expected that visitors respect them, although protocols are largely unwritten, apparently unsystematic (there are disagreements over some protocols and others may not be applied universally), and often a visitor would not know what the protocols are until he or she breaks one. Behaving in accordance with protocols is a sign of respect, regardless of a person’s ethnicity. Thus the two concepts are related, that is to show respect is to follow expected protocols. Many protocols are pan-Indian, followed at most powwow gatherings. There are also protocols for attending specific ceremonies, such as the sweat lodge, and any involving the pipe. Because the form of these ceremonies originated among the Lakota, the protocols do as well. Within Lakota communities, the ceremonies and the attending protocols are inseparable, whereas, in the process of commodification (the repackaging a product for the market), only the most palatable (or ‘mystical’) parts of the ceremony are exported for the non-Native consumer. This may explain the absence of the heyoka ceremony, which includes a dog sacrifice, from the ‘seven rites’ of the Lakota, described by Black Elk in Joseph Epes Brown’s The Sacred Pipe, and from the New Age workshop circuit. This does not mean that it has not been the subject of popular books, such as those by Lynn Andrews, who writes about heyoka in Medicine Woman (1983), where it refers to a trickster figure, a ‘contrary’, although not once is dog sacrifice mentioned. In fact, she does not refer to the ceremony at all. The justification for using the emic terms is due largely to the imprecise nature of the etic terms and the suspicion that, in the case of ritual, they are poorly defined academic constructions (see Grimes 2000c: 263). Regarding ‘codes of behaviour’, this is perhaps too broad a category in one sense, because it includes etiquette, but also too narrow, as it only defines behaviour. Both ‘ritual’ and ‘codes of behaviour’ are conceived of as prescribed actions, but in Native American contexts, having a ‘correct’ attitude and intent alongside correct procedure is thought to be necessary for efficacy, thus the emic terms, ceremony and protocol, include more than the surface actions. ‘Spirituality’ Versus ‘Religion’ From the discussions below, Native Americans say they are employing the term ‘spirituality’ as a reaction to missionary religions, associated with colonialism, but move toward ‘spirituality’ and away from institutional forms of religion is also part of a wider trend in Western society. In which context is the term being employed, within their traditions or within a post-colonial discourse? Are they employing the term ‘spirituality’ in a generalised, essentialised manner, as part of a homogenised pan-Native American identity? The late Dakota scholar, Vine Deloria Junior, provided this interpretation (1999: 134): When we speak, therefore, of Native American spirituality, we do not speak of an abstraction, a set of beliefs, or a genetic propensity to be poetic and stolid. We rather describe an attitude toward the world which, when seen in a social setting, can be transmitted to others by the proper behaviour of the possessors of the tradition. ‘Tradition’, he writes, is not formally learned, but observed. He speaks of spirituality within ‘in a social setting’ where ‘proper behaviour’ is of particular importance. Noting his use of ‘we’, it is not the academic ‘we’, but that of the other community he belongs to, ‘the Native Americans’. Is he speaking for all Native Americans? ‘We’ also implies a ‘not-we’, the non-Native people he is addressing. He and other Native writers may be overemphasising ‘spirituality’ to distinguish their way of life from Christian ways of life not because there is an emphasis on spirituality within Native American society itself, although that is the impression created by such descriptions, but to challenge and be offered as an alternative to the colonial systems of government, church and educational institutions. In the textualised debates, it at first appears that Native Americans employing the term ‘spirituality’ tend to be well-educated, have or have had Church involvement (e.g. Vine Deloria Jr.) or are actively engaged in academic institutions or in politics as ‘Native American’ spokespersons (e.g. Ward Churchill). Christopher Jocks writes: ‘I am aware of the questions raised in the last few years about Churchill’s claim to “Creek/Cherokee Métis” identity… Certainly the irony of these accusations in light of his stance on the issues is lost on few who are aware of it’ (Jocks 2000: 74n). The American Indian Movement, primarily an urban organisation, also employs the term and, in the fieldwork study conducted among the Mi’kmaq, ‘traditional spirituality’ as a descriptor for their practice was equally prevalent. In Savage Systems (1996), which traces the origin of the academic discipline of comparative religion to the initial misobservation by European colonisers of the ‘absence of religion’ (Chidester 1996: 11) among indigenous peoples, David Chidester points out that early European colonialists were employing a Christian definition of religion. For example, in 1858, James Gardner regarded people in southern Africa still in ‘their heathen state’ as having no idea ‘(1) of a Supreme Intelligent Ruler of the universe; (2) of a Sabbath; (3) of a day of Judgement; (4) of the guilt and pollution of sin; (5) of a Saviour to deliver them from the wrath to come’ (quoted in Chidester 1996: 85). It must be remembered that the European colonizers held these Christian tenets to be absolutely true for them and for all humanity. The religion that explorers and missionaries failed to detect among indigenous peoples was that of an institutional, hierarchical, dogmatic belief system. As these elements were perceived to be more or less absent, then the conclusion was that they had no religion. In recent years, social-anthropologists are still questioning the existence of religion among indigenous people because it is a Western construct or equates with ‘personal faith’. Rather than redefine ‘religion’, they would rather avoid its use altogether. In his From the Enemy’s Point of View, about the Araweté in Brazil, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro defines ‘religiosity’, which he says the Araweté do not possess, as ‘reverence, psychological withdrawal, or devaluation of the “real” world’ (Viveiros de Castro 1992: 14). His point is that nothing is more natural to the Araweté than the “supernatural”, but by denying the existence of ‘religiosity’ among the Araweté, he confirms the understanding of ‘religion’ as a category in opposition to the ‘real’ world, or the social-economic-political realm of existence. When speaking of our own European ‘cultures’ and ‘religions’ we assume that there is a clear distinction between the two and a less obvious separation between them in indigenous peoples’ lives, especially as they do not conceive of them as distinct realms in the first place. Benson Saler, anthropologist of religion, acknowledges the difficulties ethnographers have in defining ‘religion’ where there are no local equivalents corresponding to the word and that what we call religion may not be organized into a ‘coherent bundle’, but diffused and entangled throughout local ‘lifeways’ (1993: 17). To help distinguish religion from something else, the fieldworker ‘invents’ culture by creating analogies between his or her own culture and the one observed in order to create an intelligible representation of the latter (Saler 1993: 18). As the ethnographer is ethnocentric whether she or he perceives religion to be sui generis or as culturally bound, Saler advises that ‘whether or not we need an explicit definition is a situational matter’ (Saler 1993: 85, emphasis in original). This brings us to the question of how we, academically speaking, should describe what we perceive and whether we can perceive what actually appears, beyond the linguistic word-games and conceptual gymnastics. In some agreement with Saler’s view, Graham Harvey states that (2000: 2): [J]ust because languages do not have a word for ‘religion’ does not mean that their speakers are not religious, or that they do not do religion. Nor does it mean that English speakers do something unlike people whose languages do not have a word like ‘religion’. The particular history of Europe led to the word ‘religion’ being used in the way it is now…. Religion is no more ‘odd things people do on Sundays’ than it is ‘belief in God’. Elsewhere he says religions are as dynamic and as diverse as people. If ‘religions’ are misconstrued as ‘beliefs’, then do we need to adopt the opposite approach, to study entire ‘cultures’? On the one hand, indigenous people tend not to isolate ‘religion’ from, say, politics, but neither do they experience ‘culture’ as a complex ‘whole’, and that somewhere between religion and culture is the diversity of real life (Harvey 2000: 10). For several authors, that place in between might be called ‘lifeway’, employed in several works on indigenous religions (e.g. Harvey 2000: 1; Saler 1993: 18; Oswalt 1988). Indigenous languages otherwise provide alternatives to the term ‘religion’ that would obviously work better in context. The Lakota word wicohan, which roughly translates as ‘the way we do things’, is closer to the meaning of ‘tradition’ than ‘religion’. Another contender is wakan, ‘holy’, ‘sacred’ or ‘powerful’, but this word is more a descriptor. Strictly speaking, there is no ‘thing’ called religion in the Lakota language. The movement away from ‘religion’, associated with Christianity, to ‘spirituality’ is coming largely from the inside, from indigenous practitioners and scholars who are trying to counteract the predominance of functional descriptions of their religious expressions and experiences and European Christian-derived definitions, due in part to colonial-government agendas that combined a narrow view of religion with violent acts of oppression toward indigenous peoples in the name of that religion. However, it is not only indigenous people who are moving away from ‘religion’ to ‘spirituality’. Carrette and King state that (2005: 1): ‘For many people, spirituality has replaced religion as old allegiances and social identities are transformed by modernity. However, in a context of individualism and erosion of traditional community allegiances, “spirituality” has become a new cultural addiction and a claimed panacea for the angst of modern living.’ The reaction against the ‘angst of modern living’ certainly plays a part in Native American spirituality, but their conceptualisation of the term ‘spirituality’ is less toward individualism, although that is present, and more oriented toward ‘traditional community allegiances’, opposite to how Carrette and King have understood ‘spirituality’ to mean in the context of modern Britain. Because terms such as ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ resist defining, they are best viewed as components of discourse and in that context they can be explored as words of power – we can ask what is being included and excluded when the writer or speaker employs such terms. As Carrette and King have noted, ‘“[s]pirituality” has no universal meaning and has always reflected political interests’ (2005: 30). Native American Spirituality When Ronald Grimes sought comments from a few electronic discussion lists about whether or not non-Natives can teach Native American religions, some took exception to the term ‘religion’, while others rejected ‘spirituality’ as an alternative (Grimes 2000a: 86): One Native participant objected to having her practices and traditions referred to as “religion.” Although she did not specify what made this usage offensive, two common reasons are the notion of religion confines spirituality to an institution, and that it treats spirituality as a sector of life alongside other sectors rather than as something permeating all life. However, a Mohawk respondent objected to the term “spirituality,” understanding it to connote a New Age mishmash of borrowed ideas and practices. Obviously, much depends on how each term is defined. The term ‘spirituality’ appeared as a descriptor for Native American religions around the same time it had been employed by New Age practitioners because ‘religion’ connotes a creedal belief system within an institution. This view is supported by Canadian sociologist Lori Beaman: ‘Like many North Americans, my socialization has imbued in me a sense of religion that is limited to churches, congregations and Sunday attendance. Native spirituality cannot be adequately understood in these terms. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of native spirituality to grasp is its all-pervasiveness’ (2002: 136). She goes on to say, ‘there is an underlying Protestantism in the United States, and an underlying Protestantism/Roman Catholicism in Canada, that dominates conceptualizations of religion. Religious beliefs, religious organizations, and religious practices are framed according to Christian standards… [while] Christians think of sacred space in terms of buildings, Aboriginals do not’ (Beaman 2002: 142). Steltenkamp, a Jesuit priest and academic who has written extensively on Black Elk and Lakota religious practice, offers a similar view: ‘Some people avoid using the term religion when referring to their Indian “spirituality,” just as they avoid the word God in favor of the term Creator’ and surmises that ‘this semantic issue might be more a social current that reflects native people simply creating a new vocabulary of discourse that is distinct from what is traditionally idiomatic in Western religious parlance’ (Steltenkamp 2000: 122). Clearly, Native Americans are attempting to distinguish their traditions from ‘Western’ ones, but in doing so, they could end up in the same camp as the New Age. Some of the reasons why Native Americans prefer the term ‘spirituality’ to ‘religion’ are not unlike those of people who might be considered New Age, but with perhaps one exception, best summed up by Native historian Vine Deloria Jr, who had titled one of his articles ‘Native American Spirituality’ (1999): ‘“Spirituality” is the popular name for religion because Indians refuse to separate religion from everything else.’ From personal communication, 2 February 2003. This differs from the Western idiomatic use of the term ‘spirituality’, which has tended to oppose it with ‘materiality’. Others argue that the separation of Church and State with increased secularisation has relegated religion to the private realm, and thus the trend toward employing ‘spirituality’ to describe one’s practice is a feature of modernity (Beaman 2002: 142). However, modernity is also at odds with Native American spirituality. Writing about the Oka conflict between the Mohawk protesters and Canadian forces over a proposed golf course, Christopher Jocks, of Mohawk descent, writes that ‘modernity is represented by the supremacy of profitable use of land over profitless historical and spiritual value’ (2004: 144). The way we represent Native American religious traditions needs to be reassessed, Jocks believes, either by taking note of their general resistance to the term ‘religion’ to describe their way of life, or any particular aspect of it, or to expand what we mean by ‘religion’ (Jocks 2004: 145). He says we should understand religion as ‘relational gestalt’: ‘Religion, conceived of in this way, is not a system of symbols, a collection of representations; it is, rather, a system of relationships between and among individuals and collectivities, both human and other-than-human’ and that ‘[o]nly this kind of analysis can explain the survival and continual resurgence of traditional religious thought and action among American Indian people who usually insist that they have no “religion” – that the term has no relevance in their understanding of what they do’ (Jocks 2004: 146). Scholars of Native American religions ‘must continue to ask questions such as whether it is respect or colonialism even to assign the label religion to people who explicitly deny that it describes what they do’ (Jocks 2004: 147). One way to avoid this subtle act of violence is to recognise the limitations of classifications and take note of emic choices of terms and how they are applied. While the term ‘spirituality’, in a Native context, is defined differently than it is generally in the West, this does not resolve the problematic nature of the term. Philip Arnold, who teaches in Religious Studies and Native Studies at Syracuse, criticises the idea of ‘spirituality’ as a Native American view of life after comparing websites about Native Americans created by Native and non-Native people. The difference, he says, as others have indicated, is that Native Americans are inclusive of the socio-political realms when they do use the term ‘spirituality’ or ‘religion’, whereas non-Native people do distinguish those concepts from the socio-political aspects of life (Arnold 2002: 337). ‘Public discussions of “religion” among native people,’ Arnold insists, ‘generally do not mention the purely spiritual nature of ceremonial life. Rather these discussions are oriented around issues directly related to survival’ (2002: 338). It is hardly surprising that non-Natives would wish to universalise in order to appropriate what they have identified as Native American spirituality, whereas the Native American spokespersons concerned with socio-economic problems facing their communities would wish to place spirituality within the political sphere, but, as stated earlier, ‘spirituality’ is a term that can mean different things to different people, even amongst Native Americans, which leads us back to the question of what is being included and excluded by the term and to view the choices as political. Native Americans employing the word ‘spirituality’ in opposition to Christianity, or secularism/modernity, cannot avoid the wider meaning of the term as having a mystical or transcendent quality and may even exploit the association for certain ends, to further the careers of certain ‘medicine men’ (and women). Sun Bear, for example, clothed his genuine practical concerns for survival in a mystical language, thereby attracting a large number of non-Natives to his ‘workshops’, along with the ire of his fellow Native Americans (see chapter 4). To conclude, ‘spirituality’ in Native American usage refers to the totality of life. When Thomas Mails asked the renowned Lakota wicasa wakan (‘holy man’), Frank Fools Crow, if there was ‘a difference between the powers that are related to secular life and those that are related to spiritual life’, he had to explain to Fools Crow that ‘secular’ meant ‘[l]ife in the daily world as opposed to spiritual life.’ Fools Crow replied: ‘There is a natural power and there is a spiritual power, but in the old days my people did not separate daily life in the world from spiritual life. Everything was spiritual. We were soaked with it. It is only now that we see a difference’ (Mails 2001: 50). This may be due to the effects of ‘modernity’, or rather that the European Enlightenment’s conception of the world has been assimilated by Native Americans. However, today ‘traditionalists’ are consciously and actively resisting this tendency by reasserting a Native American perspective, reconstructed in part, where one’s behaviour is as important, if not more so, than one’s beliefs. Appropriation ‘Indian giver’ is a derogatory expression used to accuse someone of taking something back that he or she had given away. There is some debate over the origins of this phrase; one possibility is that when a Native American gives a gift, they expect something of equal value in return, or the return of the original gift. Another interpretation of gift-giving is that when a gift is not used appropriately, it could be taken back. Raymond Bucko also points out that ‘gifts are given to express personal relationships – when those are broken then the gifts are taken back’ (from personal communication, 12 May 2008). Whichever the meaning, the issue is that a certain code of behaviour is expected of the recipient by the gift-giver. If this is disregarded, it causes offence. Ceremonies have a number of unwritten but generally understood codes that control and facilitate harmonious relations among participants. The Lakota claim that when their ceremonies had been ‘given away’ or shared with non-Natives in the past, it was with the view that the same respect and hospitality would be given to them in return. A number of Lakota believe that their ceremonies are being abused by non-Native Americans. Now they want these ceremonies to be ‘taken back’ by disrupting and challenging the non-Native appropriation of Native American ceremonies. ‘Appropriation’, ordinarily a value-free term to mean ‘to make one’s own’, ‘to annex’ or ‘to assign’, in this context has become a negative signifier – the act of using something in a way that was not intended. Native Americans writing about the appropriation of their traditions compare non-Native practice with that of traditional tribal practice, implying that the tribal practices are conducted in the right way, are traditional, and universally accepted as such (which is not always the case), while ‘appropriations’ are considered distortions veering too far from traditional models to be recognised as ‘Native American’. For Arvol Looking Horse, the simple solution is to exclude non-Natives from Native American ceremonies and to put pressure on his own people who do not comply. As this view is not universally held by Native Americans, there is debate. Those that call into question the legitimacy of Native American or Lakota exclusivity based on ethnicity do so on two fronts: academic critiques say that Native Americans excluding non-Natives are employing a Western criterion for determining identity, and practitioners that include non-Natives insist that Lakota teachings are inclusive of the ‘four nations of man’, a Lakota-derived phrase referring to the whole of humanity. Native American practices appropriated by others are based largely on Lakota models and include the vision quest, the sweat lodge ceremony and traditional uses of the pipe, drum, specific herbs important in Plains Indian ceremonies, such as sage and sweet-grass, and the Lakota formulations of the ‘medicine wheel’. To illustrate that these practices have become ‘pan-Indian’, I conducted fieldwork in Newfoundland among the Mi’kmaq, who, in pre-colonial times, had little or no contact with Plains Indians and had their own distinct traditions, which have since almost died out after four hundred years of contact with Europeans. They now incorporate Plains Indian ceremonies such as the sweat lodge in order to revive their own culture. Contemporary pan-Indianism emerged from anti-colonial resistance movements among Native Americans at an inter-tribal level, one early example being the nineteenth century Ghost Dance movement, reinforcing a collective identity in distinction to the European colonisers. This distinction between colonisers and Native Americans was already made by European settlers themselves based on ethnicity determined by ‘blood quantum’ (see Chapter 2). The term ‘appropriation’ is applied primarily to non-Native behaviour, although Lakota traditions have also been appropriated extensively by other indigenous peoples, yet they have for the most part escaped criticism, and then only when they sell these practices to non-Natives. In practice, appropriations by other indigenous peoples outwith the Lakota are not considered ‘appropriations’ but ‘borrowings’, either because they are performed in a way that is not offensive and is ‘right’ and ‘traditional’ – performed in the way that was intended – or for purely ethnic reasons, that they are permitted to ‘borrow’ Lakota practices simply because they are another identified ‘indigenous’ group. However, the rules of participation in ceremonies also allow for the incorporation of new people, both from inside and outside the community, demonstrating that the argument against non-Native appropriation cannot be based solely on ethnicity, but on protocol, ‘the right way to do things’. In groups where traditions are being revitalised, values are not only verbalised as instructions on how to behave and be a valid member of the group, but also in narratives illustrating these values, expressed in mythical allegories or, more often, with anecdotes, but also in testimonies recounting an individual’s own personal experience, and they are invoked when one member reproves another member’s behaviour. To sum up the issue, a distinction is being made by Native Americans between Native and non-Native practitioners, between the colonised and the colonisers, when deciding who can and who cannot practise Native American spirituality. The criterion by which a distinction is made between members and non-members of Native American societies varies, but is becoming increasingly dependent on the blood quantum method or, in some cases, blood lineage. While the Lakota argument against non-Native appropriation of and participation in Lakota ceremonies is defined according to ethnicity, when describing the problem, e.g. commodification of ceremonies and the lack of training of self-proclaimed spiritual leaders, they are targeting both Native and non-Native practitioners misusing Lakota practices. The Lakota issued the ‘Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality’ because an earlier statement by a respected group of elders was ignored, which incidentally did not object to sharing of ceremonies per se, but its misuse and commodification (published in Churchill 1992: 223-5). ‘Natives’ and ‘non-Natives’ Issues of ethnicity and identity, and authority and authenticity, are central to the Lakota debates on appropriation, as are notions of ownership and responsibility. The polarisation between ‘Natives’ and ‘non-Natives’ and their perspectives relate to that of the insider/outsider distinction in social anthropology, religious studies and other disciplines, portrayed as a polarity between ‘the colonised’ and ‘the colonisers’. In most binary pairings, one is presented in a positive light and the other in a negative. However, some groups do not fit either category, e.g. hybrid cultures (see Bhabha 1994) forged out of immigrants’ own unique identity/ies, and métis – mixed heritage, e.g. Native American and European, often excluded from belonging to either group. The problem with such dichotomies, including hybridity, is that they presume pure types in opposition to each other, assuming that there are pure cultures to begin with. Rather than try to determine the insider/outsider debate substantively, this book approaches it as ‘a social rhetoric that engages in communal boundary maintenance’ (McCutcheon 2003: 340), recognising that there can be considerable disagreement among ‘insiders’ over the extent and location of boundaries. Thus, the issues raised by Native Americans and the Lakota in particular around ethnicity and authority in Native American spirituality form the data in the study of a ‘social formation’, which McCutcheon defines within the context of religious studies as a ‘useful tool for classifying and organizing for the sake of study those ways in which human communities construct, maintain, and contest issues of social identity, power, and privilege through what, for the sake of initial description, we can term “religious discourses”’ (McCutcheon 2001: 24). McCutcheon has taken the category ‘social formation’ as a ‘collective human construct’ (Mack 2000: 283) largely from the work of Burton Mack, combining it with Gary Lease’s treatment of ‘ideology’ (McCutcheon 2001: 25-26, 34). Both Mack and Lease reference the neo-Marxist social theorist, Louis Althusser, but the difference between neo-Marxists and social theorists of religion, according to Burton Mack, is that the latter, like himself, treat religion on par with other ‘semi-autonomous instances’ – patterns of social practice affecting social structures (Mack 2000: 283) – rather than as a dying phenomenon of little theoretical significance (Mack 2000: 285). ‘Social formation’ as an analytical category works well in the study of religions because it recognises the dynamic nature of societies and the semi-autonomous instances constructing and maintaining its social systems, including ‘complex codes of behaviour, rules for games, and procedures for managing encounter with other peoples’ (Mack 2000: 288), which applies to the Native American concept ‘protocol’. Referring to conventions that are taken for granted in societies, Burton Mack says (2000: 289): An example would be the codes of honor and shame that determine proper performance and accomplishment in many societies. These codes may be articulated as folk wisdom, explained in folk tales and called upon as self-evident standards when training children, for instance, or when passing judgement on a question of behaviour to call someone to task. Protocols were transmitted in this way among the Lakota and Mi’kmaq. However, in their cases, the production and replication of these codes is a conscious activity as they attempt to reintroduce standards that are considered ‘traditional’ and yet relevant for contemporary Native Americans and First Nations. They aim to reassert indigenous authorities, including self-determination, and patterns of behaviour in order to maintain or forge a distinction between their societies and the dominant ones. Whether ‘ethnic’ determinants are necessary is debatable. What will become clear in the following chapters is that the category ‘Native American spirituality’, as well as ‘Lakota spirituality’, is not so much as defined in the discourses – none specify what is and what is not Native American or Lakota spirituality – as they are employed by Native Americans to authorise certain social behaviours. It must also be noted that socially constructed ideal categories such as ‘community’, ‘society’ and ‘tribe’ are difficult to avoid in Native American studies, and so it is the case here. When I use one of these categories, I do not presume that it is a unified, static identity, but a convenient word employed in discourses to denote the ‘we’ or ‘they’ group in distinction to other groups. Likewise, the term ‘New Age’ is not a unified group, and is usually employed by Native Americans in an accusatory manner as a homogeneous entity. When employing the term ‘New Age’ (henceforth without quotation marks), I am referring to the generalised target of Native American discourses rather than an actual group. Methodology and Sources This book aims to provide a discourse analysis of the appropriation of Native American spirituality through presenting the different perspectives of practitioners, tribal leaders, scholars and activists who claim to have an indigenous, Native American or specifically Lakota perspective in opposition to that of a non-Native. Central to the discussion is the insider/outsider problem in determining who can identify themselves as Native American and have a perceived right to participate in ceremonies regarded as having originated among Native Americans. ‘Discourse’ is a term that ‘emphasizes interaction between speaker and addressee or between writer and reader,’ according to Norman Fairclough. In this thesis, an analysis of what Native Americans are saying about appropriation – and to whom – reveals a concern for behavioural practice, expressed primarily as ‘protocol’, containing the cultural values that are promoted as ‘traditional’. Some Native American protocols challenge or oppose modern, feminist or Western values, especially regarding the rules for participation. Michel Foucault writes that classification schemes and systems of thought are conditioned by an already established ‘order of things’ or ‘fundamental codes of culture’, which govern language, schemas of perception, values, etc. (Foucault 1970: xx). The codes of culture that govern values and behaviours are largely unwritten and understood nonverbally, but are revealed when faced with the different codes and values of another. The Lakota Declaration is a symptom of a clash of worldviews between an idealised ‘traditional’ culture set against the values of mainstream, modern American society. In Native American discourses about appropriation, non-Natives are presumed to relate to spirituality in a manner that is ‘postmodern’, ahistorical, self-validating and consumerist, whereas Native Americans conceive their spirituality as contextual, revitalising communities at a local level, and rooted in history; the location of ‘authority’ for the Euro-American lies within each individual, whereas for Native Americans it lies ultimately with community-recognised elders and ceremonial leaders. Some non-Native practitioners would say the right to perform a certain ceremony is a matter of personal vision, a legitimising strategy that exists in Lakota societies as well, whereas members of the American Indian Movement, along certain Native American scholars and tribal leaders, would insist that authority is determined by and within traditional Native American societies because Native American spiritual practices are inextricably bound up with Native American communities, thus adding an ethno-cultural criterion to the debate. Primary textual sources of the debate on the appropriation of Native American spirituality are those published by the American Indian Movement (AIM), tribal council statements, such as the ‘Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality’, recognised spiritual leaders, such as Arvol Looking Horse, and academics. As the ceremonial and spiritual practices of the Lakota are the most often appropriated, their promulgation through texts must be considered, especially the biographies of Black Elk and Fools Crow. An excellent ethnographic account by Raymond Bucko, The Lakota Ritual of the Sweat Lodge (1999), has highlighted the diversity of opinions among the Lakota on authority in the context of one particular ceremony. The study would not be complete without a discussion of significant ‘appropriators’, particularly Sun Bear, but also Lynn Andrews, derided as the ‘Beverly Hills Shaman’, and Hyemoyohsts Storm of métis descent, accused by Native Americans of opening the flood gates to the New Age industry in writing about Native American spirituality. In this book I do not discuss Carlos Castaneda’s works charting his supposed apprenticeship to a Yaqui Indian in The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge, and the other books that followed, as I do not have much to add to the debate about the authenticity of his sources (see Wallis 2003: 39-44), although his influence on writers such as Lynn Andrews is significant. Wallis (2003: 45-48) also discusses Michael Harner’s distillation of North and South American ‘shamanisms’ into techniques (à la Mircea Eliade, 1964) available to all, irrespective of culture or religion. Authors (poets, activists and scholars) denouncing New Age or ‘Euro-American’ appropriations of Native American spirituality are numerous, including Ward Churchill, Wendy Rose and Vine Deloria Junior. Within academia, non-Native scholars have also been accused of exploiting Native American spirituality. A heated exchange about the academic representation of Native American religions was brought to a head at one institution in particular, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and more widely among members of the American Academy of Religions. New Age appropriation and academic exploitation are often addressed together by Native American scholars as two sides to the same problem, that both are continuations of the Western colonisation of indigenous ‘territories’, including knowledge. My approach to reading texts began with the ‘Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality’, taking it as a response to other statements or actions made in the past, then working forward in time to responses to the document and similar statements and their responses. Many texts refer to each other directly, yet many do not name those with whom they are in conversation. The task, then, is to find the ‘participants’, first by topic, such as ‘Lakota spirituality’ and then by key phrases such as ‘appropriation’. Native American journals, such as Wicazo sa Review, and newspapers hold many pieces to the conversation in articles, editorials and book reviews. Not every voice was found, and others add little to what was said elsewhere, but the dialogue can be made apparent and a fuller picture of the discourse reconstructed. In an analysis of the Lakota Declaration, it is presumed that ‘texts always draw upon and transform other contemporary and historically prior texts’, referred to as ‘the intertextuality of texts’ (Fairclough 1992: 39-40), and in this case the Lakota have built upon earlier statements and are responding to others, including oral statements. In this sense, noting the Lakota Declaration’s relationship to other texts or statements is important when analysing changes in emphasis and also who is being addressed. Some texts have a particular style of language that has been employed elsewhere, and some that are in conversation with each other tend to come from a small section of society comprising of literary, academic and political ‘élites’, often those who are educated to higher education level and do not live on a reservation but are based in the ‘metropole’ and are engaged with ‘intellectual norms of European or European-derived cultures’ (Stover 2001: 817). Therefore, it is necessary to consider the position of the writers and speakers, their presumed or actual authority and the ideologies they embody as they relate to social practice. Thus, a discourse analysis of such statements refers to their intertextuality and their relationship to ‘power’, including restrictions and rules (see Foucault 1977). Regarding the Internet sources used in this research, they come largely from sites controlled by Native Americans, First Nations, federal governments and university academics. Additionally, a few other relevant sites have been consulted, such as that of Lynn Andrews. They each present a perspective or context that adds to debates about the appropriation and representation of Native American spirituality. Fieldwork has provided an essential and different perspective. I have undertaken two fieldtrips to Newfoundland to observe and participate in Mi’kmaq ceremonies that were available to the public and provided opportunities for Mi’kmaq to define themselves to others as well as for the benefit of their own members. The Mi’kmaq of Newfoundland are particularly interesting as a group because of contested histories on the island, the cultural extinction of the Beothuk, another aboriginal group native to Newfoundland, and the attitude of the chief of the Conne River Mi’kmaq in striving to contribute to rather than separate off from Newfoundland culture. Like non-Native practitioners of Native American spirituality, the Mi’kmaq have appropriated or ‘borrowed’ Plains Indian and Lakota-derived ceremonies. It became clear during my research that the sharing of ceremonies among Native Americans and Canadian First Nations is widespread. Indigenous people elsewhere have also ‘borrowed’ Plains Indian and Lakota ceremonies. Merete Demant Jakobsen, whilst attending a course in Greenland, interviewed an indigenous woman who drew not on her own Greenlandic traditions but those of Native Americans. Jakobsen asks, ‘is she committing cultural imperialism?’ (quoted in Wallis 2003: 221). ‘In such instances,’ Wallis reflects, ‘the monolithic charge of neo-colonialism is disrupted and issues of cultural “borrowing” or “stealing” complicated.’ Mi’kmaq in Newfoundland add a further complexity to the debate as they struggle to establish their own aboriginal status. The powwow and many of their ceremonies, such as the sweat lodge, are by their own admittance ‘borrowed’ or derived from neighbouring (Mohawk) or Plains Indian (Lakota, Cree and Ojibwe) sources. The concept of ‘appropriation’ would be inappropriate in this context if the Mi’kmaq were permitted to teach or conduct the ceremonies among their people, and while ‘borrowing’ is employed discursively, it implies an eventual return of such ceremonies, which may be the case with the Mi’kmaq as they begin to retrieve and construct some of their own ceremonies; ‘sharing’ might be a more suitable term. Research among the Mi’kmaq reveals extensive sharing of ceremonial knowledge between different tribes and nearly all of the ceremonial leaders state their ‘pedigree’: the sources of their ceremonies, teachers, or communities they have visited, personal visions or a period of training, including fasting. The Mi’kmaq ceremonial leaders I met, as far as I could determine, had permission to lead ceremonies after spending time learning from elders and teachers. During the first trip, I mainly listened and observed Mi’kmaq spiritual leaders, leading me to recognise the centrality of protocols. Conversations with participants, Native or otherwise, including ceremonial leaders, have been largely informal. At first I would carry around a notepad and write whilst someone was speaking, but I noticed several problems with this method: the act of writing was distracting for both me and the speaker. The speaker might stop and wait for me to finish writing, sometimes losing the train of thought, or I missed parts of the statement because I was occupied with writing. I also found it was difficult to have a two-way conversation – instead of reflecting and responding to the speaker’s words, I would be thinking of how to write down what she or he said so that I would remember the context. Ideally, an ethnographer would record the conversation with audio or audio-visual equipment, but I have found that, when given the option, individuals from indigenous communities choose not to be recorded, even though their words would be more accurately transcribed. Perhaps they know, instinctively or consciously, that they lose power over their words when they are recorded because they would not have the power to deny having said something. Whatever their reasons, I chose not to take a recording device with me nor write notes while I was speaking to people, except in formal interviews. The oral transmission of knowledge is emphasised in indigenous communities that are actively reviving ‘traditional’ methods of learning. The obvious flaw to this method is the risk of inaccuracy, unless the conversation is written down immediately after, but it enabled me to conduct the research in a way that worked for this project. Without the accessories marking me out as a researcher (recording device, notepad and pen), I had to be careful not to mislead or obscure my intentions. Whenever possible, I made the point of introducing myself to the Mi’kmaq chiefs and spiritual leaders as a student interested in the issues of appropriation and sharing of ceremonies. I did not always manage to introduce myself with those whom I had a passing exchange, as the conversations were too brief or it was during an awkward time. The individual identities named in this book are official representatives, political leaders, powwow Emcees and those regarded as spiritual leaders. Where an individual has published a statement on the Internet, a full reference is given. For all others, I refer to by region or province, e.g. ‘New Brunswick Mi’kmaq’. I have also attended a few Lakota-style ceremonies, including a sweat lodge and pipe ceremony led by Sun Bear (Vincent LaDuke) in 1991, a year before his passing. I did not know then how controversial he was; like most Europeans attending such workshops, I assumed the ceremonies he taught were authentic and authoritative because he was Native American. More recently, I attended a sweat lodge ceremony in Scotland conducted by Wa’na’nee’che (Dennis Renault), which confirmed that workshop attendees in Europe still do not question the authority of Native American teachers. In Britain, it is rare to meet them and they are presumed to have ‘spiritual knowledge’, confirming the joke Raymond Bucko heard among the Lakota concerning the greater authority given to Lakota the further they are from the reservation: ‘An Indian on Pine Ridge is just another Indian. If he goes off to Nebraska he portrays himself as a local leader. If he makes it to New York, he is a chief. If he gets to Europe, he immediately becomes a shaman’ (Bucko 1998: 106). In 1993, the same year that the Lakota Declaration was issued, I stayed with a traditional ‘medicine woman’ (pejuta win) in Wanblee, on Pine Ridge, and was invited, along with another non-Native woman, to sweat lodge ceremonies led by Sam Quiver. Arrangement of Chapters The differing methodologies employed in this research have determined the three parts of the book. The first part, chapters two to four, defines ‘Native American spirituality’, analyses the concerns of Native Americans about its appropriation and discusses examples of non-Native practices of Native American spirituality. Chapter two looks into the historical, political and cultural contexts that have contributed to the contemporary form of Native American spirituality, beginning with the suppression of religious freedom and political representation, which necessitated a definition of ‘Native American’ in order to identify recipients of government grants and programmes. In the late 1960s, the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the popularity of books about the Lakota ‘holy man’ Black Elk renewed interest in traditional perspectives and ways of life. AIM encouraged inter-tribal participation in ceremonies, especially the sweat lodge and pipe ceremonies of the Lakota, and thus it must be pointed out that the ceremonies that have been appropriated by non-Natives were already being shared between different tribes. The symbol of the ‘medicine wheel’, said to represent the ‘four nations of man’ (among other things), and the ceremony for making relatives has enabled non-Lakota to become incorporated into Lakota society and participate in their ceremonies. The third chapter considers the significance of official statements against appropriation and exploitation of Plains Indian spirituality and the current internal debates calling for the exclusion of non-Natives from Lakota ceremonies. Statements from Plains Indian elders, the American Indian Movement, the 1993 Lakota Summit and the 2003 Proclamation by Arvol Looking Horse are examined along with selected responses and a discussion about Lakota authority. Chapter four, on New Age appropriations, addresses the controversy over Sun Bear and Lynn Andrews, the first names on most lists condemning the appropriation of Native American spirituality, and discusses examples of sweat lodge and pipe ceremonies in Britain. The second part of the book, chapters five to seven, illustrates ambiguities and complexities of the insider/outsider debate in the study of indigenous religious traditions. Chapter five explores the inter-tribal sharing of ceremonies and the localisation of pan-Indian religion among the Mi’kmaq First Nations in Canada forms the fifth chapter. The loss of many of their ceremonies after conversion to Catholicism has led to, in recent decades, the ‘borrowing’ of ceremonies from elsewhere, which are largely derived from Lakota and other Plains Indian models. The chapter discusses the historical context, the aims of the contemporary revival and the incorporation of pan-Indian ceremonies in the negotiation of indigeneity and the role of protocols in that pursuit. In chapter six, the current debate concerning the criteria for studying and teaching Native American religious traditions is discussed in connection with the insider/outsider distinction. The seventh and final chapter highlights the centrality of protocols in each of these debates and questions the category ‘indigenous religion’. There are a number of directions this work could have pursued or developed further on the appropriation of Native American spirituality. Intertribal sharing of knowledge and ceremonies is an under-researched area that this book only begins to explore, likewise the nature of pan-Indian religions, its political undercurrents and its role in unifying different indigenous groups throughout the Americas. Additionally, not all First Nations in Canada welcome pan-Indian practices such as the sweat lodge ceremony; they would rather encourage their own local traditions. Another area of research worth pursuing in greater detail is inculturation as a dimension of ‘appropriation’. Many churches are ‘indigenising’ both in terms of control, such as the Moravian Church of Labrador, recently studied by Hans Rollman of Memorial University, but also in content. A priest among the Lakota, Paul Steinmetz, has written about his inclusion of the pipe in the Catholic Church in Pipe, Bible, and Peyote Among the Oglala Lakota: a Study in Religious Identity (1990), which also discusses the Native American Church. The book includes several photographs showing Benjamin Black Elk (son of Nicholas), Frank Fools Crow and himself praying with the pipe inside different Catholic Churches on Pine Ridge reservation. The ‘mixing’ of indigenous and Christian elements has been uncomfortable for some of the elders who are members of the church, as one woman mentioned to me at Conne River, but also for ‘traditionalists’ who want to maintain a clear distinction between Christian and indigenous ways, noted by Theresa S. Smith in her paper on inculturation in an Anishnaabeg Catholic Church (2000: 147). The impact of popular culture (e.g. Hollywood depictions of Native Americans) on the formation of Native American spirituality is another interesting subject, as is the Native American use of the Internet in radicalising views while also democratising them, such as opening debates beyond the circle of elders. An area not dealt with specifically in this book is that of cultural property rights, including repatriation of material culture, which the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) has sought to address. Cultural property also includes knowledge, which is particularly important with regard to the appropriation of spirituality. In his 1997 paper, ‘Native American Intellectual Property Rights: Issues in the Control of Esoteric Knowledge’, James D. Nason describes the legal problems faced by Native Americans seeking to control intellectual property. NAGPRA at the moment does not cover ‘knowledge’, although some nations have made cases for its inclusion, such as the Hopi (Nason 1997: 249). Another avenue explored by indigenous groups is protection of knowledge through copyright, but this requires named individuals to be identified as owners rather than communities. These issues are addressed in a volume edited by Tom Greaves entitled Intellectual Property Rights for Indigenous Peoples (1994), published just after the 1993 UN declaration supporting the control of intellectual property by indigenous peoples (Nason 1997: 252). However, there is a problem if such ‘cultural property’ has been shared willingly with non-Natives.