Warren Jefferson

The Initiation of Igjugarjuk as a Shaman

2010-12-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

Inuit
The Inuit live in the Arctic region along the northern coast of North America, the north coast of Alaska, and the coast of Greenland. Their culture is quite diverse, with many subgroups and dialects, but they all share a common ancestry. The Inuit people developed different lifestyles according to the environments they faced. (At times this environment is so harsh that no white man has ever been able to live there without outside support.) Some bands were whale hunters, some hunted seals, and all hunted caribou. They traveled in skin kayaks on the sea and on dog sleds on the ice. While away hunting, they lived in igloos made of ice, but most of the time they lived in earth shelters with sod roofs.

In the early 1920s, the noted Danish Inuit scholar and explorer Knud Rasmussen led an expedition across Arctic America, from Greenland to Alaska. During this trek he met a number of Inuit shamans (Igjugarjuk, Najagneq, and Aggjartoq) and the woman named Kinalik, who told their amazing personal biographies and initiation stories. The passage that follows is my rendering of Rasmussen’s story.

The Initiation of Igjugarjuk as a Shaman
As a child, Igjugarjuk was disturbed by visions and dreams of strange beings. The dreams were quite vivid, and he could remember every aspect of them. His family was very concerned for him, and the shaman Perqanaoq was consulted. The shaman met with their son and determined that he was destined to become a shaman, and so the parents gave him over to Perqanaoq for training.

So began his initiation. In the depth of winter, when the temperature can drop to –40 degrees Fahrenheit, Perqanaoq put Igjugarjuk on a sled and took him far out into the Arctic wilderness. There he built a small igloo for the boy, just big enough for him to sit cross-legged in. He took Igjugarjuk off the sledge and deposited him in the hut on a small piece of animal skin. He was left there alone and told to think only of the Great Spirit.

After five days, Perqanaoq returned and gave the boy a drink of warm water and left. After fifteen more days, he returned and gave Igjugarjuk another drink of water and a small piece of meat. This was to last him another ten days. At the end of his ordeal, which lasted thirty days, he was brought back to the village, where he fasted and continued his training.

Igjugarjuk was a great shaman when Rasmussen met him. He told Rasmussen he thought he would die from the fasting and cold and said that at one point a young woman with a powerful presence appeared before him, hovering a few feet above the ground. He never “saw” her again, but from that time on she remained his helping spirit. Igjugarjuk was convinced that suffering and deprivation was the key to knowledge and power, for as he said, “The only true wisdom lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness, and it can be reached only through suffering. Privations and suffering alone can open the mind of a man to all that is hidden to others.”

Shamans and Medicine Men

2010-08-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

Shamanism goes back to a very early time in human history. The literature on archaic societies shows that shamanism has a well-developed history of its own, and there is clear evidence of “shamanic elements in the religion of the Paleolithic hunters.” (Eliade 1964) Shamanism has been found in some form in Siberia, North America, South America, Indonesia, and Oceania.

It was the shamans who developed and held the myths of humankind during prehistoric ages and on into the modern age. At the turn of the twentieth century, the shaman complex was found among the Inuit in the Arctic and the people of Tierra del Fuego. Within these two groups, living at opposite ends of the vast twin continents of America, there is a strong tradition of shamanism and they share similar expressions of it.

Ancestors of the Fuegians are thought to have come from Siberia during the first wave of migration into North America about 50,000 years CE. Until the early part of the nineteenth century, they had lived an isolated and undisturbed existence. In the 1870s, Thomas Bridges established a mission among the Fuegians. His son Lucas wrote an account of life growing up among the Yahgan and Ona people entitled Uttermost Part of the Earth. In it he includes a number of fantastic and vivid descriptions of shamanic healing and magic sessions he witnessed. From these accounts and others we can get a unique and somewhat representative view into the metaphysical world of the primeval hunters and gatherers of North America. And what does their belief system include?

As was mentioned earlier, they had what some call a High God named Watauinaiwa, and they have a strong shamanic tradition. Their shamans exhibit extraordinary physical capabilities, including insensitivity to fire and other magical abilities. To them, as with many Indian people, illness is an intrusion into the body of an alien object or the loss of the soul and its imprisonment in another world realm. It is the shaman’s responsibility to remove the intruding object or to find and retrieve the lost soul. “The core of shamanism is the experience of going to a spirit world and being shown visions or given songs that are taken back and shared with one’s community in ceremony or used in individual healing rites.” (Mills in Walter 2004)

Shamans are sensitive individuals, philosophically and religiously gifted, the dreamers and visionaries of the group. Through natural ability and intense training under an instructor they become attuned to the subtler forces of the natural and supernatural world. Possessed, some think, with a touch of madness, they can enter a trance at will, during which time they become a conduit between this world, the spirit world, and the land of the dead. It is thought that these visionary trips formed the basis of the people’s ideas about the soul and the afterlife.

Shamanism in its purest sense is a technique of ecstasy, but not every ecstatic should be considered a shaman. Only a shaman can enter a trance at will. (Eliade 1964) Shamans cure the sick and can travel to realms beyond the ordinary senses, even into the land of the dead. Upon returning, they would tell incredible tales of adventure in which they used their clairvoyant vision to locate a soul, battle with spirits, and traverse barriers and obstacles to return to the world of the living with the rescued soul.

The following account from John Swanton describes how a Tlingit shaman cured sickness. The techniques explained here are representative of shamans in general.

How a Tlingit Shaman Cured Sickness
He cured by blowing or sucking, or by passing over the affected parts carved objects supposed to have power. Sickness was usually attributed to witchcraft, and after pretending to draw a spear or some other foreign object from the sick man, the shaman designated who had sent it into him. Shamans themselves had power to bewitch people. They could put spirits into inanimate objects and send them out to do mischief. It appears from various stories that eagle down and red paint were also use in curing, for they are employed in restoring the dead to life. (Swanton 1909)

Soul

2010-05-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

Throughout history, in all parts of the world, people have held a concept that in Judeo-Christian tradition is referred to as the soul and some other cultures refer to as the Double. The ancients had other names: to the Egyptians it was Ba; the Greeks called it Daimon and soul; the Romans referred to it as Genius for men and Iuno for women; and the Scandinavians called it Fylgja. It is the immortal portion of a person, for some time encased in a physical body, that transcends time and space and connects to the entire kosmos. (“Kosmos” is a Greek word meaning the whole of all existence, the physical, mental, and spiritual realms, as opposed to “cosmos,” which refers to only the physical aspect of existence.)

Most Indian people had a well-developed concept of the soul before Christian contact, but it was quite different from the Euro-American idea. The Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that a person’s soul is created at birth by God and is unique for all time. It lives out one lifetime and that is all.

In the Christian model, if a person has led a righteous life, at death his or her soul would go to heaven, a place above the sky, to be in the presence of God and the angels. If the person committed minor, or venial, sins the soul went to purgatory for a time to expiate their sins and then went to heaven. If the person led a wicked life and committed an unforgivable, or mortal, sin the soul went to hell, a place of perpetual fire beneath the earth, a realm of evil and suffering, where it would burn forever and never see the face of God.

Indian people believed the human soul to be preexistent, meaning that it existed before birth, and that souls come from the gods or the Great Spirit. Coming from the gods makes the soul supernatural, but the Indian soul is also sensual, connected to the body through the senses as well as the intellect, and local as opposed to a distant, abstract entity as in the Christian model.

In the Indian model, a soul could be reborn to live again in a newborn person. Some believed that a soul could reincarnate in more than one person at the same time, particularly a person of high social standing. They also believed that all living creatures possess a soul and that even inanimate objects have a soul, but that only humans are fully self-aware.

There are numerous accounts from shamans of fetal consciousness and soul activity during the embryonic period, such as precognition, prophetic vision, and clairvoyance. There is an account included in this book from a Winnebago medicine man recalling memories of time in his mother’s womb (see “T. C.’s Account of His Two Reincarnations,” pp. XX–XX).

According to Ake Hultkrantz, who wrote a seminal work on American Indian soul beliefs, many Indian groups thought that a person has within them two souls. While soul concepts vary widely among the various groups, the belief in a dual-soul was widespread in all regions of North America. The exception was the Pueblo people of the Southwest, who were influenced by the Mexican high culture’s concept of a unitary-soul. The dual-soul concept was also found through out pre-Christian Europe.

One of the souls in this duality is the free-soul, seen as the immaterial double of a person. The free-soul is fully emancipated, with a spiritual existence of its own. During deep sleep, trance, or in times of sickness or delirium, this free-soul is able to leave the body and travel to other realms. For the ordinary person, free-soul travel is random wandering, but a shaman can direct his free-soul travel and is even able to go to the land of the dead and return.

The free-soul stays with the person throughout his or her lifetime and at death the leaves the body either through the mouth or fontanel and begins its journey to the realm of the dead. The deceased retains his consciousness, or ego, in the realm of the dead but loses all carnal desire. In most groups, it is usually the free-soul that is reborn.

The second part of this duality is the body-soul, or life-soul, sometimes called the breath-soul. This soul animates the body and facilitates movement and consciousness. Among several groups, the life-soul is thought to reside in the chest, and many connect it with the heart. Quite possibly, the many rock drawings of animals and men found in the Southwest are the earliest representations of Native soul beliefs, for they show a lifeline running from the mouth to the heart. For many people, the heart was the seat of the soul, and the breath coming through the mouth in the form of words expressed a person’s soul.

At death, the life-soul can wander for a time in the land of the living as a malevolent ghost, but eventually the disincarnate life-soul dissipates and merges with the wind, the clouds, and sometimes the Great Spirit, or it just disappears and is gone forever. Some believe the soul goes to live in the Milky Way. While a person is alive, if the life-soul leaves the body and cannot return, the person dies.

The Indian soul is preexistent, but where does it reside before being incarnated on earth? The location varies widely among different groups. For the Pueblo people and most agrarian tribes, the unborn dwell in the land of the dead in the underworld, but in a different place from the dead. The Salish of Shoalwater Bay believed the souls of children came from the rising sun. The Chinook believed this as well. The Montagnais believed children come from the clouds; the Eastern Shawnee thought children live on little stars in the Milky Way. The Mandan believed babies are incarnated stars. The Oglala believed that Skan, the sky god, gave man his free-soul and life-soul. For the Fox Indians it was the Great Spirit that gave people their life-soul and the culture hero (an entity of mythological time who changes the world through intervention or discovery) their free-soul.

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2010-01-25T08:08:00.000-08:00

That’s My Chair: The Gitxsan Reincarnation Case of Rhonda Mead

This contemporary rebirth story is by Antonia Mills, professor of First Nations studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. She has been doing research with First Nations of northern British Columbia since 1964, first with the Dane-zaa (Beaver Indians) and then with the Gitxsan, beginning in 1984, and the Witsuwit’en since 1985. She served as an expert witness for the landmark Delgamuukw land claims case. She is the author of Eagle Down Is Our Law: Witsuwit’en Law, Feasts, and Land Claims (1994), co-editor (with Richard Slobodin) of Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief among North American Indians and Inuit (1994), and the editor of Hang Onto These Words: Johnny David’s Delgamuukw Evidence (2005). She is currently working on the book "That’s My Chair: Rebirth Experience of the Gitxsan and Witsuwit’en," assisted by a grant from the Aboriginal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Rhonda Mead’s Story

Since the summer of 1984, I have been documenting reincarnation belief among the Gitxsan, a First Nation tribe whose ancestral home is in northern British Columbia, Canada. My first trip to the Gitxsan was at the invitation of Ian Stevenson, the pioneer of reincarnation studies, who had been investigating cases of reincarnation within the Gitxsan and other First Nation tribes in British Columbia and Alaska. Dr. Stevenson told me that there was a Gitxsan family that claimed an elderly relative had reincarnated as her own great-granddaughter.

This story had all the classic characteristics of being a Gitxsan rebirth case: the elder, Susan Albert, had made a prediction she would return after death; after she died, she appeared to several relatives in what are referred to as “announcing dreams”; the child, Rhonda Mead, fulfilled the conditions and desires of her maternal great-grandmother, Susan Albert, in her new life; Rhonda acted from the point of view of Susan Albert, and she recognized objects belonging to the elder as hers; finally, she had a birthmark on her arm similar to a tattoo on Susan Albert’s arm.

I first met Rhonda’s family and began to document this case when Rhonda’s mother, Cynthia, had brought her children to visit the grandparents, Margaret and Ed Elton। Susan Albert’s daughter Margaret, Rhonda’s grandmother, referred to her late mother as a Gitxsan princess—that is, someone well born into an important family: Susan Albert’s brother was the head chief of their matrilineal house।

In 1973, Susan Albert was around seventy-six years old and feeling her age. For some time she told her family that it was time for her to go. Margaret told me, “Whenever she got up to give her testimony [in church], she always asked the Lord if He would take her, and this is what [happened]. She had a stroke and she never regained consciousness.”

Susan Albert herself anticipated being reborn for some time before she passed on. Her daughter Margaret reported, “During the years, Mother [Susan Albert] always claimed she wanted [her granddaughter] Cynthia to be her mother when she came back.” Margaret said her mother was explicit about the qualities she wanted in her next life. According to Margaret, Susan said, “I want to be born beautiful, clever, and not poor anymore. And I’m going to have blond hair.”

When Susan Albert died, her granddaughter Cynthia was pregnant. Cynthia’s cousin Katie had thought that Cynthia was going to have a boy, until she dreamed of Susan Albert. She told Cynthia that she was going to have a girl, who would be the reincarnation of Susan Albert. That was the first announcing dream of Susan Albert as Rhonda.

As Cynthia’s expected due date approached, Susan Albert’s daughter Margaret flew to Vancouver to attend the birth. On the eve of the baby’s birth, Margaret dreamed of her mother so vividly that she said, “Mother, what are you doing in Vancouver?” From this dream, Margaret knew her mother was returning, and she said to Cynthia’s husband, “Don’t count on a boy. Mother was here.” This was the second announcing dream of Susan Albert as Rhonda.

The baby girl, Rhonda Mead, was born a blond, though this is not surprising, since her father is non-Indian, as is her maternal grandfather. Rhonda also met Susan Albert’s other specifications of wanting to be “clever and not poor anymore.” In 1984, when Rhonda was eleven, her mother told me that she was getting certificates for outstanding academic achievement in school. Since Rhonda’s father had a steady job at the Vancouver airport, Rhonda was comfortably situated. Additionally, Rhonda exhibited marked precocity and memories appropriate to her great-grandmother, Susan Albert.

The public health nurse who visited Cynthia three weeks after the birth noted that baby Rhonda was atypically advanced. The nurse said Cynthia should treat Rhonda like a five- or six-month-old baby, because she could pull herself up like a baby of that age. Before Rhonda was eight months old, she was able to walk and talk. Her mother noted several times that she was talking before she had teeth.

When Rhonda was fifteen months old, Cynthia brought her to visit her maternal grandparents (Margaret and Ed Elton) in Hazelton, British Columbia. When Rhonda came into the house, she insisted that her uncle Fred get out of the easy chair in which he was sitting, saying, “That’s my chair.” Cynthia said, “She just screamed bloody murder if anybody sat in her chair. She just used to squirm and push Fred away.” To her relatives, Rhonda’s response to the chair showed that she was Susan Albert come back, because the chair was indeed one of two that had belonged to Susan Albert that her daughter Margaret had brought from her mother’s house after her (Susan Albert’s) death.

When it was time to eat, Rhonda refused to be seated until she was brought a chair that had been sitting near the bathroom with things piled on it. This was the other chair that Margaret had brought from Susan Albert’s home after her death. Margaret reported that Rhonda “threw everything off of it and brought it in and sat down, and she wouldn’t let anyone else [use it]. She says, ‘That’s my chair.’” Margaret’s husband, Ed, added that although Rhonda could barely see over the edge of the table while sitting on the chair, she insisted, “That’s my chair.”

On this same trip, Rhonda went around her grandmother’s house stuffing clothes piled for laundry into shopping bags. Her grandfather Ed noted that this was just like Susan Albert, who, “being short of closet space, kept unseasonal clothes in old flour sacks. There was a time when we were reminded that Susan Albert was getting her way.” On subsequent visits to her grandparents, Rhonda continued to chase her uncle Fred out of “her chair.” Years later, Rhonda’s grandmother, Margaret, remarked to her son Fred that Rhonda was “becoming more mortal now; she’s not making such a fuss about the chair.” Fred replied, “That’s what you think. She’s still trying to pull me off her chair.”

At one point during this visit, Rhonda’s mother, Cynthia, and Rhonda’s grandparents were talking about prices and mentioned the figure “seven dollars.” Rhonda, who apparently had not been following the adult’s conversation until that point, said, “That’s my dog.” This was another strong indication to them that Ronda was Susan Albert come back, for Susan Albert had purchased a dog for seven dollars, and “having a sense of humor,” as her son-in-law put it, had named the dog Seven Dollars. The dog had died before Susan Albert’s death and was not a frequent subject of conversation, so it was unlikely that Rhonda had heard the story.

On another occasion during that visit, Rhonda’s mother, Cynthia, and Rhonda’s grandmother, Margaret, were looking through Margaret’s jewelry. Rhonda came up, picked up a bracelet that had belonged to Susan Albert, and said, “That’s my bracelet.” The incident with the chairs, the dog, and the jewelry confirmed a linkage that was suspected before she was old enough to speak. Given Rhonda’s precocity, her identification with Susan Albert’s belongings, and her fulfillment of Susan Albert’s request to be blond, smart, and well off, Rhonda’s family was convinced that she was indeed Susan Albert reincarnated as her great-granddaughter.

A final indication that Rhonda is her great-grandmother returned is a birthmark on her right wrist that resembles a curving brown line. This is said to correspond to the tattoo of an S (for Susan) that Susan Albert had on the same part of her right arm. In talking to Rhonda in 1984, when she was eleven years old, she did not remember saying any of the things she was reported to have said about her chair, her dog, or her bracelet. Her grandmother Margaret said, “After a certain age, it [the awareness] leaves; but then the genes are still there, so the idiom still comes out.” Margaret said she didn’t know why the memories fade and added that the dreams she used to have, in which her mother, Susan Albert, appeared and warned of danger concerning Rhonda, ceased as well. At one point during the interview, I asked Rhonda’s mother, Cynthia, if her grandmother, Susan Albert, ever chided her for smoking. Rhonda, eleven years old at this point, answered with an emphatic “Yes.” Everyone assumed she had answered for the late Susan Albert.

In 2008, I talked to Rhonda’s mother, Cynthia, and learned that Rhonda was married and had four children. Her first child was a girl, born in 1999 after her grandmother Margaret had passed away. When I asked Cynthia if she thought that Rhonda’s daughter was Margaret come back, she said, “We aren’t sure.” Unlike many other Gitxsan and Witsuwit’en adults who recognize their lives as being impacted by who they were in a previous incarnation, Rhonda does not now identify herself as Susan Albert reborn.
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Rhonda Mead’s story and many other intertwined rebirth cases from the Gitxsan and Witsuwit’en of the Pacific Northwest are recounted in the forthcoming book That’s My Chair: Rebirth Experience of the Gitxsan and Witsuwit’en, which describes the wealth of interconnected cases that have been documented over twenty-four years, from 1984 to 2008, to be published in 2010.

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Eastman

2009-12-28T08:04:00.000-08:00

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858–1939), a great North American Indian, also known as Ohiyesa, was a prolific writer and articulate spokesman who worked tirelessly for the cause of justice for the Indian people.

The first missionaries, good men imbued with the narrowness of their age, branded us as pagans and devil-worshipers, and demanded of us that we abjure our false gods before bowing the knee at their sacred altar. They even told us that we were eternally lost, unless we adopted a tangible symbol and professed a particular form of their hydra-headed faith. We of the twentieth century know better! We know that all religious aspiration, all sincere worship, can have but one source and one goal. We know that the God of the lettered and the unlettered, of the Greek and the barbarian, is after all the same God.

—Charles Alexander Eastman, "The Soul of the Indian"

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Winnebago Shaman Initiation

2009-11-30T13:22:00.000-08:00

Here is a tale of metamorphosis, human-to-human reincarnation, and shamanic initiation, as told by a Winnebago shaman. He was a warrior, and while on the warpath he was killed; but he was unaware of what happened and returned home. Once there, he realized that no one could see or hear him and he suspected that he was dead. He went back to look for his body and found it lying where it had fallen, and he knew then that he was indeed dead.

Between human lives, he lived life as three different kinds of animals—a fish, a bird, and a buffalo He retained human consciousness throughout these multiple lives and was eventually reborn as a human Before he returned to the human world, the spirits initiated him as a shaman, and he acquired extraordinary powers. He could heal the sick, cause a person to die, and bring a person back to life again.

I came from above, and I am holy. This is my second life on earth. Many years before my present existence, I lived on this earth. At that time everyone seemed to be on the warpath. I also was a warrior, a brave man. Once, when I was on the warpath, I was killed. It seemed to me, however, as if I had merely stumbled. I rose and went right ahead until I reached my home. At home I found my wife and children, but they would not look at me. Then I spoke to my wife, but she seemed to be quite unaware of my presence. What can be the matter, I thought to myself, that they pay no attention to me and that they do not even answer when I speak to them.

All at once it occurred to me that I might, in reality, be dead. So I immediately started out for the place where I had presumably been killed and surely enough, here I saw my body. Then I knew positively that I had been killed. I tried to return to the place where I had lived as a human being, but for four years I was unsuccessful.

At one time I became transformed into a fish. However, the life of the fish is worse than ours. They are very frequently in lack of food. They are nevertheless very happy beings and have many dances.

At another time I became transformed into a little bird. When the weather is good the life of the bird is very pleasant. But when it is cold they are compelled to undergo many hardships on account of the weather as well as on account of lack of food. When it was very cold, I used to go to the camp of some people who were living in the neighborhood and try to steal some meat from their racks.

A little boy used to stand near these racks, and we were very much afraid of him because he carried something in his hands with which he shot and which made a dreadful noise. Whenever he shot it we would all fly away. What the boy was using was a bow and arrow. At night we slept in a hollow tree. If I entered the tree first and the others came in behind me, I would be almost squeezed to death. If, on the other hand, I waited until the last, I would sometimes have to stay outside, and when the weather was cold, I might have frozen to death.

At another time I became a buffalo. The cold weather and the food did not worry me much then, but as buffaloes, we would always have to be on the alert for hunters.

From my buffalo existence I was permitted to go to my higher spirit-home, from which I originally came. The one in charge of that spirit-home is my grandfather. I asked him for permission to return to this earth again. At first he refused, but then after I had asked him for the fourth time, he consented. He said to me, "Grandson, you had better fast before you go, and if any of the spirits take pity upon you [i.e., bless you], you may go and live in peace upon earth." So I fasted for four years, and all the spirits above, even to the fourth heaven, approved of my coming. They blessed me.

Then I fasted ten days more, and then twenty and then thirty. Finally, all the spirits blessed me, even those under the earth. When I was ready to come to this earth, the spirits gathered together in a council-lodge and “counseled” about me. All the spirits were present.

They told me that I would never fail in anything that I wished to do. Then they decided to make [a] trial of my powers. They placed a spirit-grizzly bear at one end of the lodge and sang the songs that I was to use when I returned to earth. Then I walked around the lodge holding a live coa1 in the palm of my hand and danced around the fireplace saying wahi! and striking the hand containing the coal with my other hand. The invulnerable bear fell forward, prone upon the ground, and a black substance flowed from his mouth.

Then they said to me, "You have killed him. Even so great a spirit as this you have been able to kill. Indeed, nothing will ever be able to cross your path." Then they took the bear I had killed and cut him into small pieces with a knife, piled these in the center of the lodge, and covered them with some dark material. "Now," they said, "you must again try your powers."

I asked them for the articles that I would have to use, and they gave me a flute and gourd. Then I made myself holy. All those who had blessed me were present. I walked around the object that lay piled up in the center of the lodge and breathed upon it. This I did for the second time, and all those within the lodge breathed together with me. Four times I did this, and then the spirit-grizzly bear got up and walked away in the shape of a human being.

“It is good," they said. "He has restored him to life again. Surely he is holy." After a while they said to me again, "Just as you have done here, will you always do below. Whenever you wish to, you will be able to kill a person or restore him to life. Most assuredly you have been blessed."

Then they placed a black stone in the shaman’s lodge that stood above. There again they made a trial of my powers. There I blew four times on the stone, and I blew a hole though it. For that reason, if any person has a pain and he lets me blow upon it, I can blow it away. It makes no difference what kind of a pain it is. My breath was made holy by the spirits.

The spirits on the earth and those under the earth also gave me a trial of my powers. They placed an old, rotten log before me. I breathed upon it four times and spat water upon it, and it got up in the shape of a human being and walked away. My ability to spit water upon the people whom I am treating I received from an eel, from the chief among the eels, one who lives in the center and in the deepest part of the ocean. He is absolutely white, and he is the one who blessed me. Whenever I spit water it is inexhaustible, because it comes from him, the eel.

Then I came to this earth again. They, the spirits, all gave me advice before I left them. When I came upon this earth I entered a lodge, and there I was born again. As I said, I thought that I was entering a lodge, but in reality I was entering my mother’s womb. Even in my prenatal existence, I never lost consciousness.

Then I grew up and fasted again and again, and all those spirits that blessed me before sent their blessing again. I can dictate to all the spirits that exist. Whatever I say will come to pass. The tobacco you (the patients) offer me is not to be used by myself. It is really intended for the spirits. A person is sick and he offers me tobacco. I am on earth to accept it and to try to cure him. (Radin 1923)

Tales such as this, told by shamans in both the New World and Old World, are believed to form the leitmotifs of many myths and supernatural beliefs of archaic people. Some researchers go so far as to say shaman stories form the basis of many legends and fairytales of the modern era.

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2009-11-13T13:09:00.000-08:00

Chapter One Modern Science: A New View of Reality

I have included this chapter on modern science because the discoveries made by the New Physics scientists could help open our minds to the possibility that there are other ways of thinking about our world and our lives than the ones we were brought up to believe. More than one hundred years ago, Albert Einstein introduced a set of revolutionary ideas about the nature of reality. His theory of relativity and mass-energy equivalence, e=mc2 (the mass of an object is in reality a form of its energy), caused a profound change in thinking among twentieth-century scientists, who had to ask themselves: How much do we really know about our world?

Classical science as developed by Isaac Newton supplied us with a mechanistic model of the universe that served us well for the past three hundred years। Classical science contends that the universe is composed of two fundamental entities, material objects (matter) and three-dimensional space, and that space has an independent existence from the objects within it. In the classic model, we have solid bodies moving through empty space set in motion by the forces of gravity. Matter is built from fundamental building blocks (atoms), and the way to understand complex systems is by breaking them down into their constituent parts, for when you know enough about the parts, you can understand the whole. Furthermore, time is seen as an absolute quality flowing at a constant rate from the past to the present and into the future, independent of matter and space. These ideas of classical physics work well in what’s called the zone of middle dimensions, the realm where we all live. But these theories fail as we move into very large dimensions and very small dimensions. Scientists, using modern technology and advanced mathematics, looked out at the astrophysical world and into the subatomic world and realized that Newtonian physics didn’t work there.

The New Physics, as it is called, has linked matter, space, and time in a totally new way. Along with the three dimensions of space that define the location of an object, we now must include time as an integral fourth dimension. Space and time are no longer thought of as separate entities; they are considered a dimensional continuum known as the space-time continuum.

Einstein’s theory of relativity demolished the long-held concept that time progressed at a fixed rate. Einstein showed that time is a variable dependent on the speed of the frame of reference. He demonstrated with thought problems and complex mathematics that time is relative and can expand or contract depending on the situation of the observer. He liked to tell the story of a young man who sat with a beautiful girl for an hour and how for him it seemed like just a minute. Whereas if the young man sat on a hot stove for one minute it would seem like an hour. Time duration depends on the observer.

Time’s relativity has been proven by the experiment of observing two synchronized atomic clocks, one on board the space shuttle launched into space and one on Earth. At the end of the space trip, the space shuttle clock was slower than the Earth clock.

Furthermore, astronomers can actually look back in time a million years or more. If you look at our nearest star, you will see it as it existed four years ago, because that’s how long it takes the light from that star to reach your retinas here on Earth.

Quantum Theory and the Bootstrap Hypothesis
The “bootstrap hypothesis,” developed by the noted scientist Geoffrey Chew, built on the theories of the New Physics and introduced another set of revolutionary ideas about the nature of reality. The bootstrap hypothesis rejects the mechanistic view of the universe. It claims that matter and space are an inseparable whole and that there are no ultimate constituents of matter. It further contends that there are “no fundamental entities whatsoever—no fundamental laws, equations, or principles—and thus abandons another idea which had been an essential part of natural science for hundreds of years.” (Capra 1991, 286) Instead, it maintains that the universe is a dynamic web of interrelated events in which none are more fundamental than any other, and it is their interaction that determines the structure of the whole of the universe.

In the microworld of quantum physics we find matter and antimatter, matter coming into existence and going out of existence, time moving backwards, fields of instantaneous influence at a distance, and other phenomena that defy the very basic laws of classical physics. Scientists observing the activities of the microworld are finding that it is beyond their ability to create a theory that describes what’s going on.

That’s the subatomic world, the world that none of us can perceive. But what about the world of people, automobiles, pollution, and all the rest—the “zone of middle dimensions”? How does it really behave?

Bell’s theorem, developed by the late physicist John S. Bell, gives us some of the answer. Bell’s theorem is a mathematical proof that, in effect, says our common-sense ideas about how the world works are woefully inadequate. It contends that not only does the microworld behave in ways that are contrary to common sense, the macroworld, the “real” world, behaves in irrational ways. These ideas cannot be dismissed as fantasy, because they are based on proven quantum observations that have been shown to be correct in explaining things like subatomic particles, transistors, and the energy of the stars.

New Physics scientists posit that matter cannot be separated from the space surrounding it. Further, it speculates that matter is in reality a condensation of energy in a surrounding field and that particles of matter seemingly come into existence out of nothing, the void. What we used to think was empty space is in reality a continual dynamic of creation and destruction. It is thought that matter at the subatomic level is surrounded by interpenetrating fields and behaves very much as light does.

Quantum mathematical analysis also points to the possibility that superluminal connections (that is, faster than the speed of light) in the material world may exist. According to the classical laws of physics, to effect change over a distance there has to be a signal transmitted at the speed of light. It turns out this may not actually be the case. Quantum theory points to a universe that is of one substance that cannot be separated into parts, and it seems that anything done in one place has an instantaneous effect on the system many miles away. Now that’s a revolutionary idea, and if it is true, it could explain phenomena such as telekinesis, telepathy, extrasensory perception, premonition, and other psychic mysteries.

In view of these new observations about the nature of the universe, in 1927 a group of esteemed scientists met and formulated a set of theoretical principles known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (CIQM). This was a defining moment in modern science, for CIQM refuted the idea that there could be a one-to-one correspondence between theory and reality, a hallmark of classical science. Classical science asserts that there is one world and it is just as we experience it; this is it and it is exactly as it appears. CIQM says that the world is quite different from the way we think it is. CIQM doesn’t explain specifically what the world is like, just that it is not as substantive as we perceive it. And so this eminent group of scientists had to acknowledge that it was impossible to construct a theoretical model of reality.

Considering what the New Physics is discovering about the universe, I think it wise to keep an open mind about what is possible and what is not. We should not cling too tightly to our notions of reality. As astonishing as these theories are, new theories about the nature of reality will quite likely be developed and present something even more fantastic to future generations.

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The Great Mystery

2009-09-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

The following entry is from The Soul of the Indian by Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) in which he presents his understanding of Indian spirituality. He is writing from the perspective of the early 1900s, but this worldview is still held by many Indian people today.

Ohiyesa’s story is an amazing one of adaptation and success. He came from a mixed-ethnic family of Santee Dakota and Euro-American ancestry. His maternal grandfather was a graduate of West Point and served many years in the United States Army. He was brought up by his paternal grandmother in traditional Dakota style in the wilderness of Manitoba, Canada, until he was fifteen. The traditional Dakota lifestyle was quickly disappearing, and Ohiyesa’s father had the foresight and ability to arrange a Western education for him.

Ohiyesa was a quick learner, earning an undergraduate degree and going on to become a medical doctor, one of the first American Indians to do so. During the early 1900s he served as reservation doctor for the Lakota Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation, again the first Indian to hold that position. It was during this time that the terrible Wounded Knee Creek massacre occurred, and he treated the wounded and dying from this grave tragedy.

As a result of his experience at Pine Ridge, he became active in Indian rights issues, and after leaving there, he traveled extensively across America and to England giving speeches in support of Indian causes. He did much to further the cause of Indian justice and increase understanding between Euro-Americans and Indian people.

Ohiyesa’s Story

The worship of the “Great Mystery” was silent, solitary, [and] free from all self-seeking. It was silent because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity. Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselytizing, nor persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.

There were no temples or shrines among us, save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky! He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun kindles his evening campfire, He who rides upon the rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas—He needs no lesser cathedral!

That solitary communion with the Unseen, which was the highest expression of our religious life, is partly described in the word bambeday, literally “mysterious feeling,” which has been variously translated “fasting” and “dreaming.” It may better be interpreted as “consciousness of the divine.”

The first bambeday, or religious retreat, marked an epoch in the life of the youth, which may be compared to that of confirmation or conversion in Christian experience. Having first prepared himself by means of the purifying vapor-bath, and cast off as far as possible all human fleshly influences, the young man sought out the noblest height, the most commanding summit in all the surrounding region. Knowing that God sets no value upon material things, he took with him no offerings or sacrifices other than symbolic objects, such as paints and tobacco. Wishing to appear before Him in all humility, he wore no clothing, save his moccasins and breechcloth. At the solemn hour of sunrise or sunset, he took up his position, overlooking the glories of earth and facing the “Great Mystery,” and there he remained, naked, erect, silent, and motionless, exposed to the elements and forces of His arming, for a night and a day to two days and nights, but rarely longer. Sometimes he would chant a hymn without words, or offer the ceremonial “filled pipe.” In this holy trance, or ecstasy, the Indian mystic found his highest happiness and the motive power of his existence.

When he returned to the camp, he must remain at a distance until he had again entered the vapor-bath and prepared himself for intercourse with his fellows. Of the vision, or sign, vouchsafed to him, he did not speak, unless it had included some commission which must be publicly fulfilled. Sometimes an old man, standing upon the brink of eternity, might reveal to a chosen few the oracle of his long-past youth.

The Native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury. To him, as to other single-minded men in every age and race, from Diogenes to the brothers of Saint Francis, from the Montanists to the Shakers, the love of possessions has appeared a snare, and the burdens of a complex society a source of needless peril and temptation. Furthermore, it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less-fortunate brothers. Thus he kept his spirit free from the clog of pride, cupidity, or envy, and carried out, as he believed, the divine decree—a matter profoundly important to him.

It was not, then, wholly from ignorance or improvidence that he failed to establish permanent towns and to develop a material civilization. To the untutored sage, the concentration of population was the prolific mother of all evils, moral no less than physical. He argued that food is good, while surfeit kills; that love is good, but lust destroys; and not less dreaded than the pestilence following upon crowded and unsanitary dwellings was the loss of spiritual power, inseparable from too close contact with one’s fellow men.

All who have lived much out of doors know that there is a magnetic and nervous force that accumulates in solitude and that is quickly dissipated by life in a crowd; and even his enemies have recognized the fact that for a certain innate power and self-poise, wholly independent of circumstances, the American Indian is unsurpassed among men.

The red man divided mind into two parts—the spiritual mind and the physical mind. The first is pure spirit, concerned only with the essence of things, and it was this he sought to strengthen by spiritual prayer, during which time the body is subdued by fasting and hardship. In this type of prayer, there was no beseeching favor or help. All matters of personal or selfish concern, as success in hunting or warfare, relief from sickness, or the sparing of a beloved life, were definitely relegated to the plane of the lower, or material, mind, and all ceremonies, charms, or incantations designed to secure a benefit or to avert a danger were recognized as emanating from the physical self.

The rites of this physical worship, again, were wholly symbolic, and the Indian no more worshiped the Sun than the Christian adores the Cross. The Sun and the Earth, by an obvious parable, holding scarcely more of poetic metaphor than of scientific truth, were in his view the parents of all organic life. From the Sun, as the universal father, proceeds the quickening principle in nature, and in the patient and fruitful womb of our mother, the Earth, are hidden embryos of plants and men. Therefore our reverence and love for them was really an imaginative extension of our love for our immediate parents, and with this sentiment of filial piety was joined a willingness to appeal to them, as to a father, for such good gifts as we may desire. This is the material or physical prayer.

The elements and majestic forces in nature, Lightning, Wind, Water, Fire, and Frost, were regarded with awe as spiritual powers, but always secondary and intermediate in character. We believed that the spirit pervades all creation and that every creature possesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself. The tree, the waterfall, the grizzly bear, each is an embodied Force, and as such, an object of reverence.

The Indian loved to come into sympathy and spiritual communion with his brothers of the animal kingdom, whose inarticulate souls had, for him, something of the sinless purity that we attribute to the innocent and irresponsible child. He had faith in their instincts, as in a mysterious wisdom given from above; and while he humbly accepted the supposedly voluntary sacrifice of their bodies to preserve his own, he paid homage to their spirits in prescribed prayers and offerings.

In every religion there is an element of the supernatural, varying with the influence of pure reason over its devotees. The Indian was a logical and clear thinker upon matters within the scope of his understanding, but he had not yet charted the vast field of nature or expressed her wonders in terms of science. With his limited knowledge of cause and effect, he saw miracles on every hand—the miracle of life in seed and egg, the miracle of death in a lightning flash and in the swelling deep! Nothing of the marvelous could astonish him, as that a beast should speak or the sun stand still. The virgin birth would appear scarcely more miraculous than is the birth of every child that comes into the world, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes excite more wonder than the harvest that springs from a single ear of corn.

Who may condemn his superstition? Surely not the devout Catholic or even Protestant missionary, who teaches Bible miracles as literal fact! The logical man must either deny all miracles or none, and our American Indian myths and hero stories are perhaps, in themselves, quite as credible as those of the Hebrews of old.

If we are of the modern type of mind, that sees in natural law a majesty and grandeur far more impressive than any solitary infraction of it could possibly be, let us not forget that, after all, science has not explained everything. We have still to face the ultimate miracle, the origin and principle of life! Here is the supreme mystery that is the essence of worship, without which there can be no religion, and in the presence of this mystery, our attitude cannot be very unlike that of the natural philosopher, who beholds with awe the Divine in all creation.

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"Choice" review

2009-09-01T08:08:00.000-07:00

I was very glad to get this recommendation from Choice magazine which publishes book reviews to academic libraries.

"This very interesting volume is a compilation of reincarnation beliefs, experiences, movements, and stories among North American Indians, including near-death experiences, soul travel, and metamorphoses. The accounts were taken largely from two sources: the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology publications and The Internet
Sacred Text Archive.

"Most range in date from the 19th to the early 20th century. Many different North American groups are represented, including the Inuit of the North, the Kwakiutl of the Northwest Coast, the Hopi of the Southwest, the Winnebago of the Great Lakes, the Cherokee of the Southeast, and the Sioux of the Plains.

"The collection is preceded by a chapter with an overview of North American Indian religious beliefs. The final two chapters offer a brief comparison of North American Indian reincarnation beliefs and experiences with those from Greek and Roman history and from the world's great religions, pointing to the commonalities among all premodern peoples.

"Black-and-white photos appear throughout, largely taken from Edward Curtis's 20-volume set The North American Indian (1907-30).

"Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers." -- M. R. Dittemore, Smithsonian Institution Libraries

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Winnebago Shaman Story

2009-08-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

The Winnebago were known for their powerful shamans and had a strong belief in reincarnation. The ancestral lands of the Winnebago tribe are around Green Bay (Lake Michigan), Wisconsin, and the Lake Winnebago region. In the 1840s, the Winnebago were forced to give up their lands and subject to removal a number of times. Eventually they were allowed to settle on land in northeastern Nebraska, but a significant number resisted removal and remained in Wisconsin. The Nebraska reservation contains approximately 120,000 acres. In 1852, the Winnebago population was estimated to be 2,521. In 2007, it was 2,600.

The following is a story of human-to-human reincarnation as told by Thunder Cloud, a Winnebago shaman referred to as T. C. in the narrative. Here T. C. talks about his two previous lives and how he died and came back again to this his third lifetime. He describes his time between lives, when he was “blessed” by Earth Maker and all the abiding spirits and given special powers, including the ability to heal the sick.

T. C.’s Account of His Two Reincarnations

"I once lived in a party that numbered about twenty camps. When I had grown up to be a lad, although one not large enough to handle a gun, a war party attacked us and killed us all. I did not know, however, that I had been killed. I thought that I was running about as usual until I saw a heap of bodies on the ground and mine among them. No one was there to bury us, so there we lay and rotted.

"I (my ghost) was taken to the place where the sun sets (the west). There I lived with an old couple. This place (spirit land) is an excellent place, and the people have the best of times. If you desire to go anywhere, all that you have to do is to wish yourself there and you reach it. While at that place, I thought I would come back to earth again, and the old man with whom I was staying said to me, “My son, did you not speak about wanting to go to the earth again?” I had, as a matter of fact, only thought of it, yet he knew what I wanted. Then he said to me, “You can go, but you must ask the chief first.”

"Then I went and told the chief of the village of my desire, and he said to me, “You may go and obtain your revenge upon the people who killed your relatives and you.” Then I was brought down to earth. I did not enter a women’s womb, but I was taken into a room. There I remained conscious at all times. One day I heard the noise of little children outside and some other sounds, so I thought I would go outside. Then it seemed to me that I went through a door, but I was really being born again from a woman’s womb. As I walked out, I was struck with the sudden rush of cold air and I began to cry. At that place, I was brought up and I was taught to fast a great deal. Afterward, I did nothing but go to war, and I certainly took revenge for the death of my relatives and myself, that being the purpose for which I had come to earth.

"There I lived until I died of old age. All at once my bones became un-jointed, my ribs fell in, and I died the second time. I felt no more pain at death then than I had felt the first time.

"This time I was buried in the manner used at that time. I was wrapped in a blanket and then laid in the grave. Sticks were placed in the grave. I watched the people as they buried me. There in the grave I rotted.

"As I was laying there, someone said to me, “Come, let us go away.” So then we went toward the setting of the sun. There we came to a village where we met all the dead. I was told that I would have to stop there for four nights, but in reality I stayed there four years.

"The people enjoy themselves there. They have all sorts of dances of a lively kind all the time. From that place we went up to the place where Earth Maker lived, and there I saw him and talked to him, face to face, even as I am talking to you now. I saw the spirits too, and, indeed, I was like one of them.

"From that place I came to this earth again for the third time, and here I am." (Radin, 1923)

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Characteristics of Reincarnation Belief Systems

2009-08-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

While there have been, and currently are, a number of different reincarnation belief systems throughout the world, there are basic characteristics they all share:

1. The dead person has only temporally left the body. Some part of them (the soul) survives and returns to the world of the living to continue a purpose.

2. There is a cycle of birth and death in effect. People are born, live out their lives in “this world,” and die. Their disincarnate essence (soul) passes into the “afterworld,” stays for a time, and is reborn. There are some belief systems that do not include a journey and/or stay in an afterworld.

3. There is a desire to have an ancestor reborn in a friendly place among people they know. Thus a person is usually reborn among immediate family or relatives. Accordingly, ancestors play a large role in many of the societies that believe in reincarnation. But ancestor worship is not found among North American Indians. Indic religions (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain) are an exception to this, for in over half the reported cases, individuals were reborn in another area among people they did not know. This is also true for reports of rebirth in the Western reincarnation model. Very often a person is reborn into another ethnic group altogether.

4. In a number of reincarnation belief systems, including North American Indian, rebirth as an animal or insect is possible.

Most everyone knows that Hindus and Buddhists believe in reincarnation, but few know that North American Indians have well-developed rebirth concepts, many of which show striking cross-cultural similarities to Indic beliefs. Although belief in reincarnation was expressed somewhat differently among the various tribes, it was found throughout Native North America and was a central aspect of tribal cosmologies in these societies. Reincarnation belief is widespread among Northwest Coastal and Inuit tribes, and it is from them that we have the most reported cases of reincarnation in the literature. (Mills 1994)

Central to the Indian idea of reincarnation is the belief in the connectedness, continuity, and interdependence of all life. Traditional people believed, and many still do, that the life force of the planet comes from a realm beyond creation and that plants, animals, and humans recycle, or are reborn, over and over again.

Analysis of the historical records collected by anthropologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries allows a look back into the distant past of human development and the evolution of belief systems. Many of the beliefs of North American Indians regarding reincarnation and the soul can be found in premodern societies throughout the world. If we can strip away the cultural influences and understand the limitations of experience and what is referred to as the “myth of the given,” we see that what is being described are universal human experiences shared by people of all cultures since the beginning of time, even into the present.

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Topics Explored

2009-07-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

Chapter one delves into the foundations of the modern world’s view of reality and challenges our accepted ideas about how the world works. The theories and laws of classical physics do not hold up in the microworld or macroworld. New physics posits that matter, the rock-solid part of our everyday world, is in reality a bundle of energy and fundamentally behaves very much like light. “As I saw it, a scientific truth was a hypothesis that might be adequate for the moment but was not to be preserved as an article of faith for all time.” (Carl Jung in Campbell 1976)

Then, in order to get right to the Indian experience, the story of human-to-human reincarnation is presented as told by Thunder Cloud, a Winnebago shaman. He dies in battle but does not know it until he sees a heap of bodies on the ground and his own among them. He is taken to the “spirit land” and is reborn two more times.

The modern-day case of Rhonda Mead of the Gitxsan tribe in British Columbia, Canada, who it is thought to be the reincarnation of her own great-grandmother, is explored next. Her family believes the young girl is the matriarch of the family reborn, because she will not let anyone sit in a chair that the great-grandmother always sat in. That, along with the fact that she knows things only the deceased great-grandmother could know about, convinces everyone she is the relative reborn.

Chapter two presents an overview of the religious beliefs of the North American Indian in order to put reincarnation in context. We learn that Indian religion is comprehensive and multifaceted, and that it held a central position in the life of the average person. The Indian’s life was infused with the supernatural, and there was constant interaction between the spirit world and humans. Also discussed are the guardian spirit and shaman complex within these societies, the Indian emphasis on vision quests for the attainment of personal connection with beings in the spirit world, and animal helpers.

Chapter three compares Indian reincarnation beliefs with world religions. The ethnological record shows that American Indian reincarnation beliefs have a very long history and that Indic and ancient Greek belief systems do not predate them. Their metaphysical concepts are as elaborate and complete as those found in these other ancient cultures.

This chapter also presents soul concepts found throughout the world and shows that the Indian concept of rebirth is quite different from the Christian concept. In many groups there was a belief that the human soul could be reborn to live again in a newborn person. There was also a dual-soul concept, wherein it was believed that a person has within him two souls, a life soul and a breath soul. Some also believed that a soul could reincarnate in more than one person at the same time. Most North American Indians believed that all living creatures possess a soul and that even inanimate objects have a soul.

Chapter four is on shamans and medicine men, who developed the myths of the spirit world and traveled to the land of the dead. Shamans were sometimes called upon to help someone defeat an enemy or cause a death, and this chapter presents an example of magic by analogy, or sympathetic magic, in the Cherokee formula to destroy life. You’ll also read numerous accounts of shaman initiations, reincarnations, and journeys to the land of the dead, including a number of Inuit stories.

Chapter five is about death and near-death experiences and introduces, among other entries, James Mooney’s account of the Ghost Dance, which swept across the plains in the 1860s. It was initially a peaceful revival movement that prophesied that the Indian world would be restored, the whites would be gone, and the dead would live again. But the dancing was perceived as a threat by the white authorities, and an armed attack was ordered on a group of dancers on the Sioux reservation. As a result, we are left with the tragic massacre at Wounded Knee Creek as part of American and Indian history.
In this chapter you will also find numerous accounts of Indian experiences dealing with death and dying and journeys to the underworld, including the Cherokee Orpheus myth, a legend found among numerous Indian groups. Next, you will read about the Winnebago view of death, which considers death just a different kind of consciousness. Although the dead are no longer seen, interaction with them has not ceased, for they return in dreams or visions to communicate with the living. The dead may also come back again as newborn babies.

Chapter six presents more stories on death, the afterworld, and soul journeys from various tribes, including the Pueblo, Tlingit, Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka’wakw), Omaha, Coastal Salish, and Sioux. In chapter seven you will learn about the world’s great religions and their concepts of reincarnation, both historically and how they are perceived today. This chapter also covers the Western concept of the soul and reincarnation.

Chapter eight is on ancient cultures, focusing on Egyptian, Greek, and Roman beliefs, with particular emphasis on Plato and his writings on reincarnation. You’ll learn about the Greek Orpheus myth, which describes how a newly married husband unsuccessfully attempts to bring back his young bride from the underworld. This myth, with slight variations, is widespread among various Indian groups.

The stories that follow are mostly from traditional Indian people of North America of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Told in their own words, they recount experiences of death and rebirth, near-death experience, journeys of the soul and soul retrieval, travel to the land of the dead, and people becoming animals in this life and the next. May these stories take you on fantastic journeys, stir your imagination, and illuminate a part of the complex psychic life of American Indians so that you can share in their rich spiritual traditions.

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Introduction

2009-06-23T19:04:00.000-07:00

As conscious beings endowed with reason and reflection, we are perhaps uniquely aware among the creatures of this world of our own mortality, which has been, since time immemorial, the ultimate mystery for humankind. Experience shows that at death we perish and our body turns to dust, but the existential question remains: Is death really the end?

The belief in reincarnation seems to be an early development in
human consciousness. Evidence discovered in a number of Neanderthal burial sites and cave sanctuaries suggests these early humans held a belief in reincarnation. (Homo neanderthalenis, an ancient and primitive form of humans, appeared in Europe as early as 150,000 CE. They walked the earth with our ancestors for more than five thousand years until they disappeared in 24,000 CE.) Carl Jung, the noted Swiss psychiatrist who researched the “collective unconsciousness,” considered the idea of reincarnation an archetype, or primitive mental image, common to all humanity.

It may be helpful at the outset to offer definitions for some of the terms used in this book. These are taken from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

Eschatology The branch of theology that is concerned with the ultimate or last things, such as death, judgment, heaven, and hell.

Exist To have being or actuality; to be; to have life.

Incarnate Invested with bodily nature and form.

Reincarnation The discarnate soul of a deceased person that comes back into bodily nature and form; to have died and come back into being and actuality; to be; to have life again.

Soul The animating and vital principle in man credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion, and conceived as forming an immaterial entity distinguished from but temporally coexistent with his body.

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Forword by Antonia Mills, PhD

2009-06-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

This book represents a rich collection of writings about the reincarnation beliefs of North American Indians and the relationship of soul journeys, metamorphosis, and near-death experiences to reincarnation concepts. The collection draws from a wide array of writings on the topic both by American Indians, such as activists Charles Eastman of the nineteenth century and Thomas Sewid of today, and by ethnographers and researchers, including Franz Boas, Paul Radin, Knud Rasmussen, and others. The author presents a variety of writings on the traditional spiritual beliefs of many different American Indian peoples and the spiritual movements, such as the Ghost Dance and Shaker religion, that occurred in the wake of the takeover of the continent by European colonizers.

Most people are unaware of North American Indian reincarnation beliefs, and I welcome this book as a valuable contribution to making people more aware of how North American Indian spiritual beliefs include the view that all life forms reincarnate. When I began my studies of the spiritual beliefs of North American Indians, I had little knowledge of the depth and breadth of reincarnation concepts within their cultures. Even after taking courses in Indian spirituality at Harvard University, I was not aware of how widespread this belief was. It was not until 1964, when I went to the Beaver Indians of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, as a graduate student, that I learned how integral and vibrant the experience of reincarnation is among these Northern Athabaskan people. The experience of finding elders returned as babies among them was, and still is, very real for these people.

Finding the depth of the Beaver Indian experience, I began a search to learn how prevalent such concepts were among other North American Indian peoples. In fact, I found that the concepts are alive and well among many Native groups, despite the influence of Christianity. Reincarnation belief has continued, even if some Indian people have kept their views private or hidden because of the imposition of the Western worldview.

In this book the reader is offered a rich tapestry of accounts from a number of North American Indian peoples about death, dying, and returning to this life. Included are stories from the Inuit of the polar region; the Northwest Coast people, such as the Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka’wakw), the Gitxsan, the Tlingit, and the Suquamish; the Pueblo people of the Southwest, such as the Hopi and Cochiti; the Winnebago of the Great Lakes region; the Cherokee of the Southeast; and the Sioux people of the Plains areas.

While there are some differences between the concepts and experiences of the varied North American Indian peoples, many aspects of the experiences described for a particular Indian tribe in this tome can be found among other tribes as well. For instance, the depiction of crossing the divide from this world to the spirit world described for the Coastal Salish by Curtis is similar to accounts from other Indian groups; the attempt to bring back a deceased wife from the nether world is recounted among a wide variety of Native peoples; the role of the shamans in healing and bringing people back to life from near death, as in the case of Black Elk presented here, is a theme many North American Indian people would recognize; the pierced-ear marks found on the reincarnated person as described here for the Coastal Salish relate to similar experiences among the Blackfoot and the Gitxsan, among others; and the wailing for deceased relatives and the care taken to not mourn too long, lest the loved one be prevented from getting to the land of the dead, beautifully recounted in the examples presented in this book, have similar expressions among many North American and Inuit peoples.

There have been five hundred years of interpenetration of Western and indigenous concepts since first European contact. While most of the accounts presented here relate to the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, what is impressive is that Indian concepts and experiences about soul journeys, metamorphosis, near-death experience, and reincarnation have survived through this long and difficult history and are aspects of Indian life that continue to be experienced today.

The author suggests the southwestern Cochiti concept of punishment of a soul for an evil life is indigenous. I wonder if this represents an internalization of the judgmental bias Christianity adopted when the concept of reincarnation was made anathema at the second Council of Nicea in the fourth century AD. Perhaps the Cochiti account is an internalization of the Christian concepts of soul punishment combined with the Indian concept of soul journey to the spirit world.

The ethnological record indicates reincarnation beliefs are found among the indigenous peoples on all continents of this earth. And as this book demonstrates, they are also found in most of the world’s major religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, esoteric Judaism, the classical Greek tradition, early Christianity, and some sects of Islam. The author’s introductions to the writings that he has selected show that reincarnation concepts are a part of foundational human religious experience and are closely interrelated to shamanism.

I am grateful to Warren Jefferson for his great, pure effort in putting this information together in one volume. A book like this is long overdue and makes a valuable contribution to the study of comparative religion. My hope is that it will bring an increased awareness to the general public about the profound spiritual traditions of the North American Indians, traditions from which I think we could all learn a great deal.
—Antonia Mills, PhD
Professor, First Nations Studies, University of Northern British Columbia

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Prepublication Reviews

2009-06-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

My book has been out since March and I am pleased that the publisher Native Voices has gotten it listed on Amazon as well as Barns and Noble. It should be of interest to comparative religion students, students of Indian culture and religion, and "new agers." A recent survey reveals that 25% of the people in the US believe in some form of reincarnation!

"Reincarnation Beliefs of North American Indians" by Warren Jefferson presents a fascinating assortment of meticulously documented spiritual legends, beliefs, stories and experiences of near death, soul travel, metamorphosis, and reincarnation held by different North American Indians. These stories and examples are taken from primary sources of information, anthropological records, and traditional belief origins. Jefferson asserts that such beliefs have much of value to offer today because of their purity of pre-existence, or pre-modern religious insight capacity.

"Accounts include a Hopi story of A Journey to the Skeleton House, Ohiyesa's (Charles Eastman's) story, the Ghost Dance Religion of the Lakota, the Gitxan Reincarnation Case of Rhonda Mead, and many more. Authentic, historic, sepia or black and white photographs of North American Indians are interspersed lavishly throughout the chapters. A list of references and resources is indexed at the end of the book. Altogether,"Reincarnation Beliefs of North American Indians" presents a new compilation of ancient knowledge that is most precious to modern humans, for it is key to the ever recurring questions, "Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where do we go when we die (p. 191)?" --Nancy Lorraine, Midwest Book Review

“This book contains a unique collection of fascinating stories about reincarnation, soul travel, metamorphosis, and near-death experience. It offers a rare look into the rich spiritual life of the Indian people, and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in comparative religion and the cultures of the North American Indian.” --Antonia Mills, PhD Professor of First Nations studies, University of Northern British Columbia, coeditor of "Amerindian Rebirth"

"When the topic of 'past lives' is discussed, most people think of traditions from India and its Asian neighbors. However, another group of 'Indians,' namely those in today's United States and Canada, held similar beliefs that were equal to Asian mythologies in their sophistication and complexity. Warren Jefferson has meticulously documented North American reincarnation beliefs, legends, and stories in this engaging and authoritative account of a worldview that somehow survived the European invasion and continues to impact many contemporary tribal groups. This book is a fascinating description of how a spiritual paradigm played (and still plays) a vital role in the daily life of its believers, revitalizing and energizing the individual, the family, and the community." --Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Graduate School co-editor, "Varieties of Anomalous Experience"

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