Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals
Jamie Sams and David Carson
St. Martin’s Press, 1999
240 pages plus cards
Note: This review primarily covers the book itself, since the book is necessary for deciphering the meaning of the cards as the authors created them.
Now I know why people warned me about this book.
This is one of the worst cases of cultural appropriation I’ve seen yet. From the overuse of “Medicine” and “Great Spirit” to the assertion that this is genuine Native American spirituality, the whole book is one big hyperromanticization of the “Noble Savage”. This is the idea that all Native Americans were and are still completely entwined with nature in everything they do, and everything is mystical and amazing and there’s of course NO problem whatsoever and everything is hunky-dorey (just ignore the problems on the reservations and in the U.S. legislature, folks!)
One of my biggest problems is that the authors keep referring to “Native American” this and that. However, they’re not specific about what tribe they’re talking about. On page 221, where the bios are, the authors have between them (or so they say) Cheyenne, Crow, Sioux, Seneca, Mayan, Aztec and Choctaw learning and/or influence. Well, that’s a pretty wide variety of individual cultures there, not to mention the subdivisions within each of those tribes! I don’t believe I saw one single instance in the entire book where they referred to a specific tribe. There is no such thing as “Native American” anything–each tribe is a separate culture, not one big homogenized mass.
Of course, not only is the book lacking in-text citations, there’s not even a bibliography. How are we supposed to know where they’re getting their information? Just saying that “I learned it from so-and-so” isn’t good enough.
Additionally, there’s no indication that any of the tribes whose beliefs the authors are supposedly writing about are actually benefitting from the book and deck. Plastic shamanism as its best.
Feel free to read on for some specific examples….
“Every person has nine power or totem animals” (18)
Of course, they don’t say where they got this piece of rather generalized information.
Page 23 has a bunch of questionable mythology about how Native women are all incredibly intuitive and only men have egos.
p. 27 has a *Druidic* card layout (or so they say). What is this doing in a book that’s supposedly on “Native American totemism”?
“Thoth, the Atlantian who later returned as Hermes” (61)
I think that speaks for itself.
“Long ago, in tribal law…” (69)
Which tribe?
“This operation [of always paying for magical servies] is known as the law of the Lynx people, and is practiced by Native American. Gypsy, Sufi, and Egyptian cultures, among others. (109-110)
I’d say where they’re getting their information, but it wouldn’t be polite.
“All of our petroglyphs speak of the Motherland, Mu, and the disaster that brought the red race to North America…” (201)
Again, going to let this speak for itself.
I think you get the picture.
I do have to say that within the individual entries on different animals there are some motes of really good information. However, they’re buried in so much questionable material that I had to stop myself from throwing this book across the room a number of times. If you can swallow pseudo-Native garbage, go for it. Otherwise, avoid.
One plastic-coated pawprint out of five.
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