California Indian Shamanism

Book excerpt: Articles from ethnographers, a linguist, and Native Americans, all addressed to the topic of Native California shamanism in traditional times and in the present. A feast for the scholar or layman interested in the cross-cultural study of religion; in California Indians; or in the beginnings of art, music, and literature. Ken Hedges of the San Diego Museum of Man, for example, discusses the shamanistic aspects of California’s remarkable rock art; Craig Bates of the museum on Yosemite National Park writes of Sierra Miwok shamans in the 20th century; Dorothea Theodoratus and Wintu scholar and artist Frank LaPena present examples of shamanic art and poetry as it persists to the present day; Floyd Buckskin, an Ajumawi, discusses the conflict between New Age shamanism and traditional shamanism; and Jack Norton, a Hupa, discusses the shamanic tradition in northwestern California as it appears to a Native Californian. Seven of the papers presented at the 1990 Conference on Shamanism at California State University, Hayward.