The Suppressed History of Woman Shamanism

Max Dashu founded the Suppressed Histories Archives in 1970 to research women's history internationally and understand how systems of domination established and perpetuate themselves. Her goal is to restore women to cultural memory, to restore awareness of the full range of female experience and contributions, power and oppressions, all that has been omitted and edited out from textbooks and mass media. Throughout history the majority of writings and teachings known worldwide on shamanism have been from the masculine perspective.

From Buryat Mongolia to Gabon Africa, it was well known that the first shaman was a woman. According to a Chukchee (people inhabiting the northeasternmost part of Siberia) proverb, "Woman is by nature a shaman." Yet the female dimension of this realm of spiritual experience has often been slighted. Mircea Eliade (author of the authoritative "Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy") believed that women shamans represented a degeneration of an originally masculine profession, yet was hard put to explain why so many male shamans customarily dressed in women's clothing and assumed other female-gendered behaviors.

In fact, women have been at the forefront of this field worldwide, and in some cultures, they predominate. This was true in ancient China and Japan, as it still is in modern Korea and Okinawa, as well as among many South African peoples and northern Californians such as the Karok and Yurok. There are countless other examples, including the machi of the Mapuche in southern Chile and the babaylan and catalonan of the Philippines. Read more.