SHAMANISM & THE DRUM · LESSON 11 OF 12 · 15 MIN
Shamans of the Americas
The Inuit angakkuq and the journey to Sedna; the Amazon's ayahuasca, icaros and plant diets, and the tourism that followed Harner's teachers; María Sabina and the mushroom velada; the Mapuche machi; the curandero — and why many Native North Americans refuse the word "shaman".
"Shaman" is a Siberian word that Europeans carried round the world, and nowhere does it sit less easily than in the Americas, where hundreds of distinct peoples had their own specialists and their own names for them. Many Native North American communities reject the word outright for their medicine people, and it is worth remembering that when Michael Harner wrote of having studied with "shamans" among the Wintu, Pomo, Coast Salish and Lakota, he named no teachers and no communities. This lesson goes to five places where the record is fuller, and ends where it must: with respect.