Shamanism in Southwest Native American Cultures

  

Shamanism:  Archaic?  Modern?  Accurate?

 

In this essay I will explore key questions about the nature of the shaman, as reflected in class readings and external sources. 

 

What Is a Shaman?

This question continues to be debated in anthropology and religious studies.  In some ways this reflects the usefulness of the term.  It is now a mainstay concept in anthropology.  At the same time there has been a consistent criticism of the label “shaman,” as described by Mircea Eliade, as being simply an idealized type rarely encountered in the field.  Scholars of religion are similarly finding shamanic elements in religious practices, if not actual individuals labelled as shamans.  On top of all this shamanism has seen a minor resurgence in the west, testing the assumption that shamanism is limited to tribal or primitive societies.

Beck et al see the shaman as the holder of “secret,” traditional knowledge.  “These individuals,” they write, “help pass on knowledge and sacred practices from generation to generation, storing what they know in their memories.”^[1]  These individuals are able to help their community maintain balance with the forces of nature.  They stand at the center of “the sacred life” of the community.^[2]  In this conception the shaman serves as an essential lynchpin, something similar to a priest who mediates between God and the congregation.  Shamans have a sacred duty to preserve the sacred ways, which may be depicted as being under threat in today’s world.  Certainly this may be the case, but it is possible that a shaman performs essentially ritualistic function within society without a sense of a greater “mission.”  Many of the Zheng Yi Daoist  practitioners I have studied in Chinese society operate in this way, performing specific rites requested by supplicants, without any sense seeing themselves as a repository of a pool of sacred knowledge.

For the record, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a shaman as a person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of good and bad spirits….Typically such people enter a trance state during a ritual, and practice divination and healing.”^[3]  That is a good starting point for an idea with hundreds of different difinitions.  An alternative, from the promoter of modern shamanism Michael Harner, is a man or woman who enters an altered state of consciousness—at will—to contact and utilize an ordinarily hidden reality in order to acquire knowledge, power, and to help other persons.”^[4]

 

Common Traits 

There are long lists of traits assumed to accompany shamans.  The anthropologist Jeffrey Vadala, who studied shamans in Haiti and the Yucatan, summarizes them as:

•       The experience of an altered state of consciousness

•       The use of chanting, music, drumming, dancing

•       Divination and prophecy

•       Deliberately induced altered states of consciousness

•       Relations with the spirit world, including animal “helpers”

•       Healing therapy focused on the soul and animal powers

•       Ability to perform sorcery

•       Magic to improve hunting results^[5]

 

Perhaps the best-known description of shamanic traits comes from Eliade in his foundational work Shamanism:  Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.  Eliade concludes that shamans put a high premium on ecstasy; that they receive their powers through “recruitment” after illness, election, or hereditary transmission; and that they are initiated in some way.^[6]

Beck et al note that shamans usually become shamans after experiencing a compelling dream or vision through illness.^[7]  They emphasize that the vision shows the individual what will occur after they awake.  The shaman will get additional training and help through experienced practicing shamans.  Beck et al conceive of the shaman as an “artist of the sacred,”  open to the inexplicable while able to make sense of it.^[8] The shamans of North America, in their view, are healers through song, can enter in to trance, can travel after souls or seek lost objects, can diagnose and cure illness, and have have spirit helps they control.^[9]

As mentioned above, Beck et al place emphasis on the shaman’s ability to maintain ecological balance.  They seem to equate healing with curing imbalance.^[10]  As one information notes, “…once someone knows the order and structure of a thing that person will know its true name.  When its name is known, it may be used,.  Afterward, that person may speak with that plant, that stone, that wind, or that animal.  He/she knows for what that thing will exchange its life and then may take its life and the power of that life to cure or put to some other personal use.”^[11]  This is a revealing sequence that suggest how shaman healing work.  It appears to be a series of ritual moves, however, not a cosmic quest to maintain cosmic balance.  The ability to maintain ecological balance, then, appears to be the authors’ interpretation.  

Beck et al also suggest that the healer/shaman have a strong desire to serve the people.  They give the example of an advertisement taken out by Claus Chee Sonny for the Navajo Nation.  The advertisement notes that he has “helped” people get two cars and livestock.  This may indicate a concrete, materialistic form of “helping,” rather than an abstract motivation to help others.^[12]  

 

Becoming a shaman

 

Eliade notes that becoming a shaman traditionally involves a “choice “ of sorts that accompanies “pathological sicknesses, dreams, or ecstasies.”^[13]  These are choices only on the surface, because the experience so alters the person’s worldview that they feel compelled to become a shaman.

 

Illness and shamanic  healing rituals:  three examples

 

Beck et al regain some credibility, in my eyes, by presenting shamanic first-person accounts from three disparate cultures, the Eskimo groups in Baffin Bay, the Pima shaman Juan Gregorio, and the Wintu shaman Flora Jones.  The Iglulik of Baffin Island see illness as a perennial part of life, predating shamanism.  But after the first shaman appeared in their mists, issues of illness and “hidden things” were referred to specialists.  One of the Iglulik techniques of healing is group dialog in which the patient’s relatives and neighbors take part.^[14]  The shaman, having special sight, is able to see root problems that are discussed in light of group norms.^[15]

In the case of the Pima, the ma:kai is a specialist in curing a particular kind of illness, ka:cim or “staying” sickness.  This is a uniquely Pima sense of discomfort usually diagnosed as caused by the failure to follow cultural norms.  Specifically, “Pimans get ka:cim sicknesses because they have behaved improperly toward a ‘dangerous object’ which was given ‘dignity’ at the time of creation.”^[16]  The key term here is dignity.  Since dignity was not accorded the object, the cure involves rituals that “appeal to the dignity of the offended object.”^[17]  Such objects could include cows, coyotes, rabbits, lightning.^[18]  The shaman’s task is to uncover and remove the ka:cim, which may involve several layers accumulated over years.

The ma:kai has two methods of curing illness short  or long dúajida ritual.  These involve smoking, singing, and sucking out the illness’s strength.  In the longer version the shaman will name the sickness and ask the patient to find when the transgression first occurred.  There is more dialogic interaction with the longer, overnight version.  Crystals, fanning with an eagle feather, and blowing smoke are also used.^[19]  

Not all Wintu shamans are healers.  Flora Jones heals by first entering into a trance state, and removing “spirit missiles” by sucking.  She first diagnoses the illness with her hands.  She enters trance through singing.  Once her spirit helper arrives, Jones jokes and chats before taking a drink of water., then a drink made from acorn water.  She then moves her hands over the patient’s body to sense injuries, “the sores, the aches, and the pains.”^[20]  She will feel any pain herself:  “I become a part of their body.”^[21]  Once the illness is isolated the spirit assistant will prescribe a cure, often involving herbs.  

 

The Shaman’s Toolbox:  the role of animals, costumes, musical instruments, and theatrics

The unrelenting problem with the word “shaman” is that it is a label stretched over a vast collection of culturally-specific practices.  Eliade spends five hundred pages cataloging shamanic practices in hundreds of cultures, each with specific titles for various healers, sorcerers, ritual specialists, and magicians whose functions, practices, or cosmologies seem to overlap with the boundaries of the shaman.  And in covering such a vast breadth he is only occasionally able to go deep.  Many of this citations simply reference the name of the tribe without further elaboration.  I prefer much more the single ethnographic account, as offered by Beck et al.  Yet the shaman remains a stubbornly useful idea in academia.  Perhaps we can move from discussing “the shaman” to “the shamanic,” while keeping every account ethnographically grounded.

With this reservation noted, it is amazing how many of the tools and garb and concepts used by Eliade’s shamanic menagerie are held in common.  In terms of cosmology, one common concept is the idea of three worlds, a lower, upper, and current.  These are often connected by a World Pillar, or tree.^[22]  This cosmology is often reflected in the shaman’s garb, whatever the material.  Eliade remarks the outfit often involves taking on a new body, generally in one of three forms:  bird, deer, or bear.^[23]  This underlies the importance of animal symbolism in shamanic ritual and, overall, shamanic identity.

Of particular importance in many (not all) cultures is the shaman’s drum.  In a fascinating passage Eliade that the consecration of the drum in effect “reanimates” the shaman’s own alter-ego, which in turn is the shaman’s primary helping spirit.  When the helping spirit enters the body of the shaman (during trance or ritual) allows the shaman to transform into the mythical ancestor.  From here the shaman gains a unique perspective on the human condition.^[24]

North American Indian ceremonies do not always involve the use of drums; it is remarkable how many of the examples we have seen rely on singing instead.  This shows the difficulty in generalizing a single model over many cultures.  Nevertheless the role of the shaman, along with the rituals, dramatic enactments, and tools, remains alluring as an explanatory framework for modern researchers.  That in itself indicates something about the very culture of modernity.

 

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^[1] Peggy V. Beck et al, The Sacred, 209-11, citing Ruth Underhill and Maria Chona, The Autobiography of a Papago Woman(Menasha:  American Anthropological Association, 1936), 95.

^[2] Beck et al, The Sacred, 96.

^[3] Oxford English and Spanish Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Spanish to English Translator, online https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/shaman.

^[4] Michael Harner, The Way of the Shaman (New York:  HarperSanFrancisco, [1980] 1990), 20.

^[5] Jeffrey Vadala, “Cross-Culturally Explorint the Concept of Shamanism,” 27 Mar., 2019, on Human Relations area Files website, https://hraf.yale.edu/cross-culturally-exploring-the-concept-of-shamanism/

^[6] Mircae Eliade, Shamanism:  Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, [1951] 2004, 4, 13, 110.

^[7] Beck et al, The Sacred, 97.

^[8] Beck et al, The Sacred, 98.

^[9] Beck et al, The Sacred,100.

^[10] Beck et al, The Sacred,107.

^[11] Beck et al, The Sacred, 107.

^[12] Beck et al, The Sacred, 112.

^[13] Eliade, Shamanism, 35.

^[14] Beck et al, The Sacred, 124.

^[15] Beck et al, The Sacred, 124-6.

^[16] Beck et al, The Sacred, 129.

^[17] Beck et al, The Sacred, 129.

^[18] Beck et al, The Sacred, 130.

^[19] Beck et al, The Sacred, 131.

^[20] Beck et al, The Sacred, 136.

^[21] Beck et al, The Sacred, 136.

^[22] Eliade, Shamanism, 263-4.

^[23] Eliade, Shamanism, 156.

^[24] Eliade, Shamanism, 170-1.