THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 3, 1996 TAG: 9609050589
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 148 lines
The New Agers thought they were promoting peace and unity by playing drums down at the Oceanfront for White Buffalo Day.
``Mother Earth's Healing Circus,'' read the fliers. ``Let there be drumming around the world.''
Tony Nelson, a Lakota Indian from Windsor, watched for a while, then handed over his own document: ``Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality.''
The trading of papers on Tuesday was a tiny example of a larger exchange taking place nationwide between Native Americans and what they call Indian wannabes. Tired of non-natives usurping sacred rites and objects - sometimes for profit, sometimes out of well-meaning ignorance - American Indians are speaking out for protection of their religious traditions.
In Hampton Roads, the problem isn't limited to the white buffalo. Native Americans say their culture and religion were misused in profit-making powwows this summer, which featured non-Indians, and by the sale of purported Indian objects, including sacred pipestone.
``To me, that is one of the most blatant sacrilegious acts ever: white buffalo exploitation by the New Age,'' Nelson said. ``To the Lakota, the white buffalo is a cornerpost of our religion. This is like rape. There's no other way to describe it. This is rape.''
The young people in tie dyes and drooping pants pounded an eclectic collection of drums, from African-style to a marching band tenor. A few played a little Hackey Sack, kicking the little beanbags in the air.
After watching them on the 17th Street stage for a while, Virginia Beach resident Mike Butler, a member of the Ojibway nation, said, ``I have no problem with this because I don't understand it, but when they put the white buffalo in it, that's putting Native Americans into the New Age festival.''
The drumming event was organized by the Living Folklore Medicine Show and Mother Earth's Healing Circus, traveling bands of entertainers headquartered in Prescott, Ariz.
A spokesman for the group said 1996 is the third year they have held drummings for White Buffalo Day. He said it was not a religious day, but a time of walking in balance with the Earth. He said the drummings had been blessed by a Sioux leader.
Nelson was relieved to find that the Oceanfront drummers did not attempt to portray themselves as Indians and that their intentions were good. Still, the organizers need educating, he said, because they used Native American cultural and religious references.
The white buffalo is sacred to some American Indian tribes, especially those from the Midwest. It is a touchy subject, even within the Indian community, because some see it as a religious symbol belonging to Indians alone, while others say it is a universal emblem of unity that should be honored by all people.
The marketing of Native American religion goes beyond that, to the selling of sacred pipestone in some New Age stores, to the Internet seminars and chat rooms where non-natives give themselves Indian names and claim to teach the healing ways of Native American spirituality, to the commercialization of powwows, where non-native dance and drum groups perform.
Particularly galling to Native Americans is that non-natives will adopt Indian dress and rituals in a time frame of weeks or months, while Native Americans may spend years earning the knowledge and right to participate in certain ceremonies.
``The issue of cultural appropriation is a very serious matter,'' said Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute, a nonprofit organization in Washington that deals with native cultural and traditional rights. ``It is theft. It is the modern version of land grabs.''
Still, Harjo, whose tribe considers the white buffalo sacred, has a tolerant view of New Agers using it on promotional flyers.
``You can't legislate taste or common sense or morality,'' she said. ``And sometimes what others do with the universal symbol is tacky. But no one goes to jail for being tacky.
``Is it better for non-Indians in America to be celebrating the buffalo rather than to be slaughtering them, rather than leaving them on the plains to rot? Yeah, I would say that's a lot better. I would say that's progress and a cause for celebration.''
Mother Earth's Healing Circus has a page on the World Wide Web that links its members with the Zippies - Zen-Inspired Pronoia Professionals, pronoia being the sneaking suspicion that someone is conspiring to help you. They are high-tech hippies who organize gatherings via the Internet and who say they redefine ancient tribal ritual for youth of the 21st century.
The ancient tribes are, largely, not amused.
``I cannot believe they have put `circus' next to the white buffalo,'' said Sandy McCready of Portsmouth, secretary of the Nansemond tribe.
Paul DeMain, editor of News From Indian Country, a Wisconsin-based publication for Native Americans, said he found the drumming less offensive than other non-native events that use the white buffalo.
``Some of them get real insensitive,'' he said. ``There's a group in Indiana that re-enacts the coming of the White Buffalo Calf Woman in complete nudity.''
DeMain said that events mixing Indian spirituality with other happenings result in ceremonies that don't accomplish anything for their organizers.
``If they don't know what the white buffalo is and they're saying a little bit of this in Lakota and a little bit of that and they're throwing in a little bit of what they've read in books, what's going on is nothing,'' he said. ``The elders that I've worked with have simply said that there are things the Creator and his messengers gave to us as Indian people and that's where it belongs; it doesn't belong anywhere else and it doesn't do anything for anybody else.''
Harjo is more concerned about advertisers, who use Indian names and images to sell products, than about New Agers celebrating the birth of an animal they know little about.
``Automobiles should not carry the names of living, viable native nations,'' Harjo said. ``President Clinton, on his whistlestop tour, just celebrated the 200-millionth Jeep Cherokee rolling off the line. I'm sorry, but that's highly inappropriate.
``It's the automobile manufacturer, the advertiser generally, all of those who would pimp our names and images for their own personal profit and gain that's the offense.''
Both Nelson and Butler have worked quietly in the past to stop non-native sweat lodges and powwows in Virginia Beach, meeting with festival organizers and writing letters. ``Part of the reason some of this may be coming about is because people are not educated,'' Nelson said. ``The days of protest are long gone. Now it's just an idea of education.''
Many tribes have issued declarations denouncing cultural theft, Harjo said. The movement led to repatriation laws in 1989 and 1990, ordering the return of human remains, sacred objects and cultural property from museums and other institutions to native peoples.
``I think the non-Indian people should look to their own rich cultures for the kinds of things that they look to our cultures for,'' Harjo said. ``They may be a little harder to find, but they will find what they're looking for. And once they've learned that, then they should return to us when they have something to exchange or something to offer, rather than simply being takers.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BETH BERGMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Sandy McCready, left, of the Nansemond tribe, attends last week's
White Buffalo Day that Jim Gagnon, right, helped organize.
Graphic
THE STORY OF WHITE BUFFALO CALF WOMAN
The story of White Buffalo Calf Woman varies slightly from tribe
to tribe. This is the version told by Windsor resident Tony Nelson,
of the Lakota tribe:
White Buffalo Calf Woman first appeared to two hunters. A white
buffalo ran toward them and told them to go back to the tribe and
prepare to receive God's messenger. Then the white buffalo turned
into a woman and disappeared.
A few days later, the buffalo appeared at the village. It changed
into a woman, and gave the tribe a pipe, which the tribe still has
in its possession. She instructed them to revere God, and said she
would return.
When a female white buffalo was born on Aug. 27, 1994, on a farm
in Wisconsin, many Native Americans regarded it as fulfillment of
the prophecy. The calf was not an albino, which makes it a rarity.
The prophecy said the calf would change colors four times to show
she was the sacred one, and would at last turn white again,
heralding a time of peace and unity among all people. by CNB