American Indian Religions::

New Age Indianism

Just as Christianity impacted Native American beliefs in numerous significant ways, an amalgamation of Native American beliefs and practices have also impacted western worldviews as well. Way back in 18th century Europe, a romantic version of Indian beliefs - the harmony of the universe and the kinship of all things - inspired the French philosopher Rousseau to expound his views on the Noble Savage. The same Indian ideas of ecological and universal harmony later inspired such American romantics and transcendentalists as Thoreau who spoke out against the ideals of materialism and progressive expansion.

During the 20th century, the published thoughts of mainly Lakota holy men and philosophers - men such as Luther Standing Bear, Nicholas Black Elk and John 'Fire' Lame Deer - have furnished the beliefs of an entire generation inspired by the Age of Aquarious. These so-called New Agers have often adopted fanciful Indian names and gathered together threads of beliefs from a variety of Indian religious systems and woven a different sort of western philosophy in the tradition of the 19th century romantics. Some Indian critics have called New Agism a pick and mix religion - whereby bits are picked randomly from different Indian religious cultures and reconstructed to suit a non-Indian audience.

Particularly offensive to Indian critics is the phenomenon of non-Indians donning buckskins and beadwork, carrying so-called 'peace pipes' and medicine bundles, wearing eagle feathers, conducting chants and beating Indian drums. Indian critics have called such people charlatans, white shamans or plastic medicine men. One has said:

"Whiteshamanism functions as a subset of a much broader assumption within the matrix of contemporary Eurocentric domination holding that non-Indians always (inherently) know more about Indians than do Indians themselves. It is from this larger whole that whiteshamanism draws its emotional and theoretical sustenance and finds the sense of empowerment from which it presumes to extend itself as 'spokesperson' for Indians, and ultimately to substitute itself for Indians altogether" (Wendy Rose).

The quote could easily apply to anthropologists like myself or students writing essays on Indian beliefs.