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Why Always A Native American?

Robbrent

Robbrent

Abominable Snowman
Joined
Apr 27, 2008
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I am reading a book (not very good to be fair) called "What the dead are dying to tell us" self-penned by a medium (it does not tell us very much)

But she mentions she has a Native American Guide called White Feather, and this got me thinking there seems to be many Native Americans on the other side offering their help (the odd Chinese soul as well) but why no other group of people such as Australian Aborigines, Members of African Tribes, Pre Romano Europeans the list is endless.

Now either the others don't want to do it (or are to busy) or the other side is having a laugh at our expense again or perhaps they are a figment of the imagination, I know what the late Joe Fisher would have said

As an aside there seem to be loads of books coming out about the afterlife, the few I have read have generally been very poor and seem to have been rushed out
 
Robbrent said:
I am reading a book (not very good to be fair) called "What the dead are dying to tell us" self-penned by a medium (it does not tell us very much)

But she mentions she has a Native American Guide called White Feather, and this got me thinking there seems to be many Native Americans on the other side offering their help (the odd Chinese soul as well) but why no other group of people such as Australian Aborigines, Members of African Tribes, Pre Romano Europeans the list is endless.

Now either the others don't want to do it (or are to busy) or the other side is having a laugh at our expense again or perhaps they are a figment of the imagination, I know what the late Joe Fisher would have said

As an aside there seem to be loads of books coming out about the afterlife, the few I have read have generally been very poor and seem to have been rushed out
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Perhaps knowingly or unknowingly it's because they have seen lots of "native Americans" on TV and movies.


Mediums says it's because the native Americans where very spiritual and lived close to nature. So do many cultures, but they don't have much TV exposure.
 
Native American spirit guides are such a cliché they made fun of it in American Wilfred. I think they summed it up best... his guide came to him as a Native American because that was an image he associated with wisdom. It wasn't an actual Native American.
 
Derek Acorah was a bit more original, his spirit guide was a 2,000 year old Ethiopian spirit who he called Sam (short for Masumai if that's how you spell it) who Degsy had known in a previous life.
 
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If, like me, you don't believe that mediums are really communicating with spirits, then it is a simple case of a sort of "benign" racism based on stereotypes.

To a certain type of person, the native American presents a clear visual image and is associated with various character traits generally held to be good.

It is the sort of benign racism that assumes that native Americans are wise, spiritual and in touch with nature; Chinese people are inscrutable and wise; (Asian) Indians are wise, spiritual and exotic; the French are great romantic lovers; the Germans are efficient, and so on.

Although it is disguised, and not intended to be hostile, it is the last vestige of what was once considered an acceptable white European/North American set of assumptions that included the patronising idea of the African "noble savage", and, worse than that, the Chinese being the "yellow peril" and Mexicans being "swarthy", and so on. And before these stereotypes which were common in children's fiction when I was a kid, there were some disgusting racial assumptions about people of one colour or another being "less than human".

However, if, unlike me, you do believe that mediums are really communicating with spirits, then the fact that so many spirit guides are from the races that are "traditionally associated" with wisdom and spirituality would tend to give credence to at least some of those old stereotypes.
 
I'm not even sure if 'native american' is any longer an acceptable moniker.

Aren't the people of that descent now referred to as 'first worlders' or something?
One of our US friends will have to educate me here.
 
I also wonder if it's because the medium can slip into - ahem - 'patois' that would be recognised as 'Native American', whereas, say, Aboriginal Australian or 8th Century celtic Britain would not make it easy for participants to know when the medium had been 'taken over'.
 
I don't think the Native American guide is a new thing. I remember reading many years ago about the history of Victorian era mediums who frequently had these guides. Perhaps they thought these guides sounded sufficiently exotic to attract the punters.
 
The Wikipedia page on Spiritualism has this useful quote . . .

"Kathryn Troy notes in [The Specter of the Indian. SUNY 2017. p.151.] a study of Indian ghosts in seances:
'Undoubtedly, on some level Spiritualists recognized the Indian spectres that appeared at seances as a symbol of the sins and subsequent guilt of the United States in its dealings with Native Americans. Spiritualists were literally haunted by the presence of Indians. But for many that guilt was not assuaged: rather, in order to confront the haunting and rectify it, they were galvanized into action. The political activism of Spiritualists on behalf of Indians was thus the result of combining white guilt and fear of divine judgment with a new sense of purpose and responsibility' "

19th and 20th Century British mediums modeled themselves so closely on the American pioneers that they took over the Native American guides, almost without thinking. There are on record some very curious voices, as polite, middle-class ladies attempt to channel Cherokee and Iroquois braves!
:rofl:
 
Why no 'Druid' spirit guides? I mean, apart from the obvious 'being made up' thing.

I'd have thought that some Celtic wisdom would be just the thing. Plus, big gruff man's voice, quite easy to do.
 
catseye said:
I also wonder if it's because the medium can slip into - ahem - 'patois' that would be recognised as 'Native American',
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Yes, um speak heap big truth. (Insert own irony emoji here.)

Part of that "accepted" set of preconceptions and stereotypes that were never questioned in my childhood. Little Plum was a favourite character in Beano, long after people were starting to question the way that black "natives" were commonly portrayed.

So, from different angles, we're converging on the native American spirit guide as "a bit exotic, easy to recognise, and easy to fake to a person who shares the same set of clumsy preconceptions."
 
Trevp666 said:
I'm not even sure if 'native american' is any longer an acceptable moniker.

Aren't the people of that descent now referred to as 'first worlders' or something?
One of our US friends will have to educate me here.
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Lol "First Nations" but thats only in Canada. First worlder is an offensive term too to some folks like as opposed to third worlders. I wouldn't get too bogged down in it though.
 
I couldn't find the Wilfred clip online...but it's quite funny and worth a watch. Even comments on his latent racism being responsible for the Native American spirit guide. I loved that show. Both American and Australian. It gets pretty Fortean I think.
 
Reminds me of the book/film The Manitou from the 1970s, when the Native American thing made a comeback in popular fiction. Thanks to that environment ad, possibly? Or the Siege at Wounded Knee? Or Billy Jack? Lot of it about, so surprised to learn here the spirit guide version went back to the Victorians.
 
Kondoru said:
Well, I wont accept anything than a REAL Indian...

Or a Tibetan Lama

How about a Greek Philosopher (or are they too expensive?)

(Its interesting to note the similar trope in Japan with the Ainu.)
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What's the plural of Ainu?
 
Trevp666 said:
I'm not even sure if 'native american' is any longer an acceptable moniker.
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I think the argument there is that they were natives before it was America, so using the term "native American" is still defining them in terms of being "American" which some natives might see as colonists or invaders.

I suspect that, as a disadvantaged minority, many of them find the terminology can be irritating, but rather less important than the practical social and economic problems, and prejudice that they face in their daily lives.

Back to the idea of native American spirit guides. I suspect that many of them are a "generic" Indian based loosely on the noble image, with a feather head dress, aquiline profile and a thousand yard stare, smoking a pipe of peace, but with a tomahawk at his belt: the sort of Indian who might be shown in one of those life sized wooden carvings they used to have in tobacco stores.

In reality, America is a big place, and before it was colonised by the Europeans, the borders with what is now Canada and what is now South America did not exist. It was a huge area, with many tribes and cultures, some being nomadic, others being more settled, some being warlike, others not, and so on.

Wikipedia says that there are now 574 "federally recognised tribes" in the USA. Those of us who remember the old style western films could probably name about a dozen. Treating all "Indians" as living in tepees and wearing feather head dresses is like assuming all British people wear bowler hats and pin striped suits.

That so many spirit guides are native American has the same degree of credibility as the "coincidence" that so many people who remember past lives claim to have been ladies in waiting to one of Henry VIII's wives.
 
Trevp666 said:
(Mikefule said, "In reality, America is a big place...")

thanks for clearing that up....lol.
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LOL. Famously, America is "the biggest small island in the world". Some people forget that and talk about "the American accent" as if it were one thing, and many also think of the natives as all being "pretty much the same sort of thing" even though some tribes may have been many hundreds of miles and many weeks of travel apart, and unaware of each other's existence.

To paraphrase Douglas Adams, “America is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to America.”
 
To paraphrase Douglas Adams, “America is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to America.”
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As an American who used to commute 3 hours one way to university by car in GOOD traffic, this rings more true than the original quote.
 
Spookdaddy said:
Your actual documentary evidence of Native American spirit guides here. Notable for an example (at around 2:47) of the potential hazards of being occupied by mystic forces:

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You will never convince me that a significant number of the audience back in the day were so innocent as to not know what that was all about. the bosses, of course, hadn't a clue, same as the double entedres in the Goon (or should I say go-on) show. I didn't but then I was about 7 at the time, but somehow I still found it hilarious.

 
Thanks as always for all the interesting replies, just to make it clear that I do believe in the afterlife but I am deeply sceptical of most modern mediums who just seem to be very good cold readers, and they choose the Native American Guide trope because many associate it with wisdom, and also its bit hard to prove that said person actually existed, the golden proof for afterlife and reincarnation to me is actual proof the person is who they claimed to be
 
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