Contemporary Korean Shamanism

While traditional shamanism continues to decline around the world, it is currently undergoing a revival in South Korea. Korean shamanism, also known as Muism ("mu [shaman] religion") is the ethnic religion of Korea and the Koreans. Though Korean shamanism has suffered centuries of ridicule and persecution, it is now acknowledged to be an important repository of Korean culture and indigenous psychology. Shamanism, in modern as well as historical eras, provides many of the same functions for Korean society as does psychological counseling. Its form is flexible and adaptable, integrating modern elements as needed in order to maintain its relevance.
 

Once viewed as an embarrassing superstition, the theatrical religious performances of Korean shamans--who communicate with the dead, divine the future, and become possessed--are going mainstream. Attitudes toward Korean shamanism are changing as shamanic traditions appear in staged rituals, museums, films, and television programs, as well as on the internet.
 

Contemporary Korean Shamanism, a new book by professor Liora Sarfati, explores this vernacular religion and practice, which includes sensory rituals using laden altars, ecstatic dance, and animal sacrifice, within South Korea's highly technologized society, where over 200,000 shamans are listed in professional organizations. Dr. Sarfati reveals how representations of shamanism in national, commercialized, and screen-mediated settings have transformed opinions of these religious practitioners and their rituals.
 

Applying ethnography and folklore research, Contemporary Korean Shamanism: From Ritual to Digital maps this shift in perception about shamanism--from a sign of a backward, undeveloped Korea to a valuable, indigenous cultural asset. Professor Sarfati masterfully demonstrates how and why shamanism in contemporary Korea is not only the most widely dispersed religion, even more widespread than Christianity and Buddhism, but also thrives through the virtual media of a digital society.

Hopi Elder Thomas Banyacya

I had the opportunity to meet Hopi elder and activist Thomas Banyacya in 1990 when he gave a talk at Central Oregon Community College in Bend, Oregon. Thomas Banyacya was one of four Hopis (the others were David Monongye, Dan Evehema and Dan Katchongva) who were named by elders to reveal Hopi traditional wisdom and teachings, including the Hopi prophecies for the future, to the general public after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. He spent half a century on a tireless and often thankless Hopi spiritual mission to save the planet from the ravages of modern materialism and greed. He was so steadfast in his devotion to the pacifism, traditions and sovereignty of the Hopi that he spent seven years in jail rather than register for the draft in World War II.  

 

Banyacya told the attendees that the Native peoples of this land were put here by the Creator with instructions to keep this land clean through prayer, meditation, ceremonies and fasting. They believe there is a spirit in every living thing around us, and a spirit in people that makes us choose what to do and correct ourselves when we err. At the present time, much human effort and mineral resources go towards making weaponry, and so nature is turning against us with extreme weather, volcanoes and big winds. These things, he said, are related to the present behavior of mankind. The Hopi elders warned that the white brother might turn away from spiritual ways and use his inventions destructively. We are in a most dangerous period, and prayer and meditation are needed. 
 

At one point, Banyacya showed a painting of a petroglyph known as Prophecy Rock near the Hopi village of Oraibi, explaining the meaning of certain features. One line leading upwards represented an all out materialistic path with success in inventions that could easily lead to self-destruction. Another line represented an alternative spiritual path with a possibility of cleaning up our mess without annihilation. Banyacya said that someday many nations would come together, we would realize the error of our ways, and people would start creating better feeling and harmony and clean up the mess without starting World War III.
 

Hearing Banyacya's message was truly a blessing and an honor. His strong stance on environmentalism, his service to communities and  nations, and his reverence for the traditions and teachings of his people were an inspiration. His words and passion inspired my own activism in environmentalism, Indigenous rights and the ongoing peace movement. Banyacya passed away in 1999 at the age of 89. His message seems very relevant in this time of global crisis.

Your Brain on Drumming

Created by Pamela Lynn-Seraphine, MS. CCTP-II: www.21stcenturydrummer.com

Drumming is the equivalent of a full brain workout. It engages practically every area of the brain at once. The reason rhythm is such a powerful tool is that it permeates the entire brain. Vision for example is in one part of the brain, speech another, but drumming accesses the whole brain. The sound of drumming generates dynamic neuronal connections in all parts of the brain even where there is significant damage or impairment such as in Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). According to Michael Thaut, director of Colorado State University's Center for Biomedical Research in Music, "Rhythmic cues can help retrain the brain after a stroke or other neurological impairment, as with Parkinson’s patients..." The more connections that can be made within the brain, the more integrated our experiences become.
 

The above infographic was created by Pamela Lynn-Seraphine, MS. CCTP-II. She is a trauma therapist, specialized in neuropsychology, drummer, consultant and brain-based educator. Pamela's research merges the brain-mind-body relationship of neural integration with the neurobiological underpinnings of drumming to understand its dynamics and improve holistic and integrative interventions in treating trauma and stress-related issues. She has researched areas such as the neurobiology of drumming for interpersonal trauma recovery, the biology of trauma, neurobiology of empowerment, peak performance, longevity, and healthy aging. Pamela is the founder of the 21st Century Drummer Academy--an online certification training program for mental health professionals and non-licensed professionals who want to provide neurobiologically informed rhythm-based interventions to clients as part of their professional scope of practice to help individuals heal the effects of complex/interpersonal trauma and adverse life experiences.
 

Current research like Pamela's is now verifying the therapeutic effects of drumming. Recent research reviews indicate that drumming accelerates physical healing, boosts the immune system and produces feelings of well-being, a release of emotional trauma, and reintegration of self. Other studies have demonstrated the calming, focusing, and healing effects of drumming on Alzheimer's patients, autistic children, emotionally disturbed teens, recovering addicts, trauma patients, and prison and homeless populations. Study results demonstrate that drumming is a valuable treatment for stress, fatigue, anxiety, hypertension, asthma, chronic pain, arthritis, mental illness, migraines, cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, stroke, paralysis, emotional disorders, and a wide range of physical disabilities. To learn more read my article on Drum Therapy.

Return of the Horse Nation

The horse originated in the Americas more than 40 million years ago. After spreading to Asia and Europe, it became extinct in its homeland. In 1493, the horse returned to the Western Hemisphere when Columbus brought a herd of 25 on his second voyage. Back in the Americas, its native land, the horse flourished.
 

For Native peoples, the first sight of a horse must have been terrifying. A Spanish soldier on horseback would appear to be a single monstrous creature. The Spanish used this terror to advance their conquest, sometimes attaching bells to their armor to add more noise and confusion. The Spanish used horses as powerful weapons of conquest and made every effort to keep them out of Native hands.
 

But gradually, Spanish horses became Indian horses, and Native people began to weave a close relationship with the Horse Nation. Strays from colonial ranches and settlements formed wild herds that Native people caught and tamed. Other horses were captured in raids and rebellions against colonial forces. As horses spread across the Americas, they transformed Native lifestyles and became an important ally in fighting the European invaders. As each tribe encountered the horse, they coined a name for it. A number of tribes used names that likened it to the dog, which was used to pull the travois when tribes traveled.
 
The Pueblo Revolt
 
In 1680, after a century of Spanish domination, the Pueblo Indians rose up against their colonial rulers in the region now known as New Mexico. Led by Popé, a Tewa religious leader, they attacked Santa Fe, killing some 400 Spaniards and forcing many more to flee. Hundreds of horses--perhaps more than 1,500--were left behind, the largest number to pass into Native hands at one time. These horses became the ancestors of many tribal herds. The Pueblo people traded horses to neighboring tribes, and the horse population expanded rapidly across North America. Spain's monopoly of horses in the Americas was over.
 
In the West, horses dispersed quickly along Native American trading routes--first from the Pueblo to the Navajo, Ute, and Apache. The Comanche on the southern Plains traded them north to their kinsmen the Shoshone. These were among the first tribes to incorporate horses into their way of life. By 1700 horses had reached tribes in the far northwest--the Bannock, Nez Perce, Cayuse, Umatilla, and others. Trading links sent them east to the River and Mountain Crow and Missouri River tribes.
 
By the late 1700s, virtually every tribe in the West was mounted. Horses strengthened Native communities and helped in the fight for Indian lands. Horses revolutionized Native life and became an integral part of tribal cultures, honored in objects, stories, songs, and ceremonies. Horses changed methods of hunting and warfare, modes of travel, lifestyles, and standards of wealth and prestige. Horses brought abundance: more food from the hunt, more leisure time. Horse ownership, or an association with horses, conferred status and respect within the community.
 
Native peoples forged spiritual relationships with the Horse Nation. Plains tribes embraced the horse as a spirit brother and a link to the supernatural realm, and incorporated the horse into ceremonies. Embodiments of beauty, courage, and healing power, images of horses on ceremonial objects represent this spiritual connection. Horse visions are still reported by traditional believers who seek knowledge and strength through fasting and vision quests. Although visions are intensely personal, some may be shared through song, performance, and art.
 
Among Native American tribes today, the horse is a symbol of freedom--and protest as a way to achieve this freedom. Horses are an integral part of life for many Indigenous people of this country, so it’s no surprise the animals play a significant role in demonstrations, from the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock to the annual Dakota 38 + 2 Memorial Ride that honors those Dakota warriors killed in the largest mass execution in U.S. history. The medicine power of the Sunktanka Oyate (the Horse Nation in Dakota language) has helped strengthen, heal and empower Native people and youth through these efforts.

Laguna Pueblo Author Leslie Marmon Silko

Ceremony
I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren't just for entertainment.
Don't be fooled
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off illness and death.
You don't have anything
if you don't have the stories.
Their evil is mighty
but it can't stand up to our stories.
So they try to destroy the stories
let the stories be confused or forgotten
They would like that
They would be happy
Because we would be defenseless then.(1)

The above passage is from Laguna Pueblo author Leslie Marmon Silko's acclaimed 1977 novel Ceremony. The excerpt emphasizes the essential role that storytelling plays within the Pueblo culture. It also sums up the repeated attempts of colonial invaders to erase Pueblo culture by destroying its ceremonies. Despite these attempts, which began in 1540 and continued until the 1930s, the core elements of Pueblo myth and ritual have survived. However, as Silko reveals in Ceremony, the years from World War II to the present have brought new threats to the Pueblos, which, although more subtle than the early Spanish conquests, are even more insidious, and must be confronted if the Pueblo culture is to survive.

In Ceremony, Silko portrays the endangered state of the Laguna reservation following World War II. The land has been damaged by runoff from the uranium mining, and a generation of young Pueblo men has been devastated by the war. Ceremony tells the story of Tayo, a wounded returning World War II veteran of mixed Laguna-white ancestry following a short stint at a Los Angeles VA hospital. He is returning to the poverty-stricken Laguna reservation, continuing to suffer from battle fatigue, and is haunted by memories of his cousin Rocky who died in the conflict during the Bataan Death March of 1942. His initial escape from pain leads him to alcoholism, but his Old Grandma and mixed-blood Navajo medicine man Betonie help him through Native ceremonies to develop a greater understanding of the world and his place as a Laguna man.

In his search for healing, Tayo seeks a cure from Ku'oosh, the old medicine man. Ku'oosh realizes that he cannot heal Tayo because, "Some things we can't cure like we used to...not since the white people came." While the return to the old ways helps Tayo, something else is needed to complete his healing ceremony. This is where Betonie, a new kind of healer, comes in. Betonie still wears the traditional clothes of a medicine man and uses the traditional paraphernalia, such as prayer sticks, gourd rattles and sacred herbs. But Betonie also uses contemporary items as healing tools, such as coke bottles, phone books and old gas station calendars with pictures of Indians on them, all common objects on the reservation. When Tayo questions the use of such non-traditional items for his ceremonies, Betonie responds, "In the old days it was simple. A medicine person could get by without all these things. But nowadays..."

Betonie provides Tayo with the blend of tools and faith Tayo needs in order to undertake the completion of the ceremony, which can cure both himself and his people. The key to survival of Pueblo culture, as Silko demonstrates in Ceremony, may be found in allowing traditional Pueblo ceremonies to change to meet the present-day realities of reservation life. It's in this fusion of old and new that the Pueblos may find the healing they so desperately need after suffering nearly 500 years of colonialism.

Ceremony gained immediate acceptance when returning Vietnam war veterans took to the novel's theme of coping, healing and reconciliation between races and people that share the trauma of military actions. It was largely on the strength of this work that literary critic Alan R. Velie named Silko one of his Four Native American Literary Masters, along with N. Scott Momaday, Gerald Vizenor and James Welch. Her publications include Laguna Woman: Poems (1974), Ceremony (1977), Storyteller (1981), Almanac of the Dead (1991), Gardens in the Dunes (1999) and The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir (2010).

1. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (Viking Press, 1977), p. 2.