One of my most basic criticisms of the New Age movement, which is an altogether different animal than pre-1960s occultism in America, is that for the most part it’s a dishonest venture into roleplaying and never concerned with actual spiritual enlightenment or (perish the thought!) proficiency in what Western Civilization would call the Black Arts which comprise Witchcraft, sorcery and the various forms of what McBride’s venerable Encyclopedia of Occult Sciences would term “low magic.”
Instead New Agers, and I include modern Wiccans,”progressive” Christianity, and the whole “Spiritual, not Religious” movement in my definition of the term along with the throngs of crystal toting weekend meditators who you’ll find prancing through a Whole Foods, are concerned with image. More specifically they are concerned with projecting an image of spiritual attainment (and thus superiority) without really putting in the work needed to have even the most simple epiphany like “What others think of me should have no bearing on my relationship with the Divine.” Thus, a weekend Yoga retreat and a subscription to Mother Jones is often all a New Ager needs to begin sanctimoniously lecturing you as to how “devolved” you are for believing in things like morality, objective truth and the literal existence of gods.
Worse than these cut rate Yogis is the “Pinkskin” which is a term used by people like Sun Bear (a.k.a Vinnie LaDuke, an actor who founded the “Bear tribe” in the 70s) to describe mostly middle and upper class Whites who join “Native American churches” in one of the New Age’s most offensively racist peculiarities. White Americans (liberals especially) so exoticize American Indian tribes that there persists among new agers an image of the Native American as some sort of nature spirit incarnate that seems to owe more to Tolkien’s image of Elves than the hard reality of pre-contact American life. As the cult like following of Sun Bear proves, this unrealistic idealization of native Americans causes many New Agers to simply follow the random proscriptions of random people in the quest to capture what they see as “pure” spirituality, no matter how insipid or dangerous.
Sun Bear himself was known to recommend that people live in Kenya or Nigeria rather than Colorado. He had a “vision” you see.
This brings me to the case of the Hauser family. They are members of the Nemenhah “band” (they are legally unable to represent themselves as a Native American tribe) who practice what they claim is traditional Native American religion. Since ancient America was home to thousands of tribes with hundreds of religious traditions this doesn’t tell us much. But the Hausers, typical of New Agers, don’t need much to fulfill their smug sense of self satisfaction. 13-year-old Daniel Hauser is in fact a “medicine man” in the group.
That’s right, this supposed church has a 13-year-old boy convinced he’s completed all the training he needs to be a shaman of some sort. All you people who have studied for years to achieve a Black Belt, 3rd Degree Initiation or a Master’s degree are feeling pretty foolish now eh?
This would be an amusing pretension if it wasn’t for the fact the littlest Shaman is dying of an easily curable cancer but is refusing treatment. He and his family have decided to treat his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma with vitamins, herbs and “natural therapies.”
From StarTribune.com:
Daniel Hauser has what doctors consider one of the most curable types of cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
But the 13-year-old from Sleepy Eye, Minn. and his parents don’t want him to have chemotherapy and radiation, the standard treatments. For the past three months, they have ignored the advice of his cancer specialists and turned to natural therapies, such as herbs and vitamins, instead.
Now they are going to court to defend their decision.
James Olson, the Brown County attorney, has filed a petition accusing Daniel’s parents, Colleen and Anthony Hauser, of child neglect and endangerment, and he has asked a judge in New Ulm to order the boy into treatment.
While I support the authority of the family over their children, I’m not sure how I feel about this case. Daniel is their son and if they choose to listen to his nonsense it should be their decision. But when parents are irresponsible we often step in, and in this case Daniel will die if he stays this course. This is death by pretension, the child and parents acting out their pinkskin fantasy of being persecuted by “the White man’s laws” for following the more wholesome and natural way of life that they imagined Native Americans would have followed.
What’s worse is that there are a host of New Agers of various stripes rallying to the cause of allowing this kid to believe that his parents can cure his cancer:
The case, which goes to trial this morning, has quickly turned into a cause celebre in the world of alternative medicine. Last week, supporters packed the courthouse in New Ulm, Minn., for a pretrial hearing, and both sides are bracing for an even a bigger crowd today.
“You can’t imagine what kind of outpouring we’ve gotten here,” said Calvin Johnson, a Mankato attorney who is representing Daniel’s parents. “There’s a lot of feeling on this subject.”
Of course New Agers and aficionados of “natural therapy” are rallying around this cause, and will until the boy dies. Then they’ll quietly slip off into the night muttering something like, “He should have used more Bee pollen,” while the Hausers passion play moves to the next act where a grieving family starts doling out bits of young Daniel’s unearthly wisdom. After all, they have already groomed him as a child prophet:
The teenager filed an affidavit saying that he is a medicine man and church elder in the Nemenhah, an American Indian religious organization that his parents joined 18 years ago (though they don’t claim to be Indians).
“I am opposed to chemotherapy because it is self-destructive and poisonous,” he told the court. “I want to live a virtuous life, in the eyes of my creator, not just a long life.” He also filed a “spiritual path declaration” that said: “I am a medicine man. Some times we teach, and some times we perform. Now, I am doing both. I will lead by example.“
Unfortunately, he will. He will lead at least some people to see how dangerously naive the modern New Age movement has become.
h/t Crime Scene KC
Rob, you called it: this is racism. Implicit in this family’s religious beliefs is the assumption that if Europeans had never shown up, Native Americans would still rely solely on herbs to fight cancer, that they would have rejected scientific advances and stagnated as a culture. In their exoticization of traditional Native American culture, they deem scientific progress and innovation to be European ideals, and stagnation and ignorance to be Native ideals.
Interesting post Rob and one that I confess brings up bad memories of my New Age days. There are a lot of big issues here, but I’ll respond to just a couple.
As someone who believes in the benefits of alternative medicine and who practiced massage therapy for 10 years and before that Reiki, I admit there were times I got caught up in the “us against the big bad medical machine” mentality.
However, I never understood the all or nothing attitude of some New-Agers. Why does it have to be natural medicine versus traditional medicine? The two can compliment each other, and depending on where they live, the family could conceivably find a medical doctor willing to work with naturopathic practitioners while the boy is going through chemo or whatever else is needed. I suppose this middle of the road attitude would be just as offensive to them as completely giving over their son’s care to traditional doctors.
When my grandmother was alive, she threw away all her heart medications saying that god will take care of her. She was an evangelical Christian. I tried to tell her that maybe god touched the minds of the people who created these medicines in order that more people might be saved. She didn’t listen at first, but eventually her family got her to go back on the meds. Likewise, I hope this boy comes out of his New Age stupor in time. It’s funny how alike evangelicals and New-Agers can be.
On the subject of the wannabes, I was introduced to Paganism through a group who said things like “I feel red inside” but later proved themselves to be incredibly racist when Native Americans objected to their fake sweat lodge ceremonies. This is about the same time I started questioning what the hell I was doing hanging around with such people. I was also urged by someone to watch that awful “What the Bleep Do We Know” flick as and expression of what they believe. Talk about New-Age Dreck 101. That pretty much sent me running away from these people.
I’m sorry for this boy. I think his parents have fed his delusion. I do support freedom of religion and the freedom to raise their child in that religion. But I think they are just plain wrong and their need to be right and prove how well natural medicine works may backfire on them horribly.
The kids life is in danger, and he should be taken from them. That seems pretty cut-and-dried to me. I understand its a slippery slope with giving social services control over how a family raises their children, but this is a form of child abuse, albeit unintentional, every bit as much as if somebody subjected their young pre-pubescent daughter to some kind of sexual fertility rite involving intercourse with adults.
One word in the kid’s defense though, Rob, I wouldn’t be too quick to denigrate his training. I agree, in all likelihood its a load of crap, but on the other hand, young children are capable of learning quickly and well. In this case, however I would say its a matter of what he’s being taught, and from what I’ve seen, it’s not too good.