Recognizing Nuage Tricksters

Nuage Tricksters

"Needing to be an expert on everything is part of your indoctrination into Colonialism and White supremacy."

"Tricksters are good at shape shifting into a form that is familiar to his victims. What is more familiar to your corrupt society than the missionary?"

THE TRICKSTER

A trickster is a supernatural being and a hero who, through his cunning, often brings some form of good to his people; sometimes the trickster is a creator god. At the same time, he often appears as though he cannot tell the difference between good and evil. The trickster stands for the forces of mischief and destruction, but he can also represent less harmful horseplay, crafty trickery, or even bungling behaviour. In his more sinister form, he enjoys bringing chaos and disorder to the world. Tricksters in Native American myth include Great Hare or Rabbit, Raccoon, or other animals among the Woodland peoples of the Northeast and Southeast; coyote in the Southwest, West and Plains; and the raven, blue jay, or mink among the Northwest Coast peoples.

The trickster in our modern world most commonly takes the shape of the nuage religious fraud. Nuage tricksters can shape shift into some very appealing forms. They don’t seem bad. They don’t look bad. But they are all about destruction. They’re interested in exploiting people for power money and even sex.

In most indigenous traditions, the trickster reveals his tricks in the end of the story and a moral lesson is learned. This is not the case for the nuage trickster. They will do everything in their power to keep from revealing their tricks. They don't trick to teach a lesson. The nuage trickster tricks because he is all about power and control. It is precisely because he never reveals his trickery, that the nuage trickster is a hard one to walk away from.

How to Recognize Nuage Tricksters: How to Make Them Reveal Their Tricks

This is written for all those non-NDN sincere seekers who think that they can find anything spiritual on the internet.

The best way to find a fraud online is simply to type “sweat lodge”, “vision quest” or “shaman” into the Google search engine. Without fail, every hit that comes up is put up by an individual who is engaged in some type of fraudulent activity. Every single one is the leftist equivalent of Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts or any other tele-evangelist currently under investigation. There isn’t any significance difference. You are a fool if you think there is.

Legitimate Native American spiritual leaders DO NOT advertise on the internet. They DO NOT charge for ceremonies, and they are not at all interested in spreading the word or increasing the flock. Stop and think about it for a minute, this is a profoundly EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN activity. If you are truly seeking an ALTERNATIVE to Christianity, then why accept it in the exact same FORM as Christianity – proselytizing evangelizing and spreading the word through books? If you really desire an alternative, they why do you insist that everything be given to you in the same FORM as the religion that didn’t meet your spiritual needs in the first place? It is an unfortunate fact of human nature that most people are quickest to trust "one of their own." Consequently, there are thousands of “White shamans” out there who cunningly project a stereotypical image that is comforting to white seekers. All these nuage tricksters do is to reinforce racist stereotypes about native people – that we are all deeply spiritual and only interested in “sharing” ceremonies with whites that will undo the environmental destruction they have done to the planet in order to maintain their privileged lifestyles. We are NOT your spiritual servants. We DO NOT exist to meet your spiritual needs. We don’t talk about our spirituality anymore than we discuss our private sex lives. Our spirituality is a private matter. It’s a cultural thing.

For those of you determined to find that one legitimate teacher out there who can see how sincere you are in your spiritual quest. Get over yourself. To the indigenous mind, this is extreme selfishness and an evil state of being. Such selfishness is considered the main barrier to a true spiritual journey among legitimate indigenous spiritual leaders. You need to come to grips with the fact that you probably weren’t meant to be a spiritual leader in a culture that you weren’t raised in and that you know absolutely nothing about. Needing to be an expert on everything is part of your indoctrination into Colonialism and White supremacy. Nuage tricksters depend on this selfishness. Reading all those books about do-it-yourself ceremonies is like watching FOX news; the more you watch the less you actually know about the issues and the more vulnerable you are to those who want to trick you. (Google it, they’ve done actual studies on this) Trickster will always try to make you think you are the exception to the rule and that there is one legitimate teacher out there if you can only find that teacher by virtue of your exceptional sincerity. This is considered selfishness and a big vice in the indigenous worldviews.

Trickster will always try to trap you with the false promise of quick fixes and easy feel-good answers. Legitimate Native spiritual leaders are 100% committed to meeting the needs of their legitimate indigenous communities. Why would they abandon their own communities to meet the needs of the colonizers who are still bent on the total destruction of their way of life? Why would they choose their oppressors needs over the needs of their own people? They don’t have time to waste on outsiders who don’t know who they are. They don’t have energy to waste on outsiders who are so frightened and confused about their identities as white people that they are desperate to find a crutch – a false belief system that will ease their guilt if only for a little while. Without exception, there are NO LEGITIMATE SPIRITUAL LEADERS of any indigenous nation selling or advertising ceremony, sacred herbs or sacred artifacts to outsiders. This is what religious frauds do. Legitimate spiritual elders DO NOT go on world tours, offer workshops, issue certificates, or form non-profits to proselytize or engage in anything as ridiculous as “Shamanic counseling.” Tricksters are good at shape shifting into a form that is familiar to his victims. What is more familiar to your corrupt society than the missionary?

If you have already been tricked by these people in the past, then YOU have a lot to account for. You have a lot of self-reflection to do. You have a lot of work to do on yourself, before you will ever be ready to deal with things that are truly spiritual. You need to confront your colonial indoctrination, your whiteness, your skin privilege, and your sense of entitlement. You need to discover what is lacking in you that you can be tricked. There is a list of websites and videos that can help you, but it will not be fun and you will not be made to feel wonderful and special. That’s what religious hucksters do. If you are truly ready to begin any sort of spiritual journey, you must be ready to confront your shadow. You must be committed to deal with the revelation that your “born-again” neopagan experiences with some nuage trickster was more about your denial, your need to escape your white identity, your weariness with a alienating Capitalist society, your longing for community and your emotional vulnerability than with anything truly spiritual or indigenous. Your foolishness, your irrationality and your gullibility is your shadow. The trickster is always looking for ways he can benefit by manipulating that shadow. The trickster preys on guilty confused people who don’t know who they really are, but he is powerless against people who have to courage to acknowledge and confront their shadows. When you know your shadow, (your Colonialism) you can’t be tricked.

If you still continue to support and defend these religious hucksters then you are complicit in the spiritual genocide of the indigenous nations on this planet. You cannot escape the responsibility of this or the guilt of this. You can only find a more clever and more manipulative spiritual huckster to delay this painful self discovery. Spiritual growth isn’t about rainbows and crystals; it is about being painfully and intensely honest with yourself. It’s about knowing who you really are – not false piety, not an inflated ego or a need to go around telling people you’re a shaman or that you’ve studied with a shaman. This is disgraceful selfishness to the indigenous mine. This is a foreign state of being to a white person, but it doesn’t cost a penny and you don’t need a guru to get to a new level of honesty. All you need is a commitment to STOP lying to yourself. STOP the denial. Stop the flight into fantasy and live in the moment in the real world. We’ve met dam few non-NDNS who are willing to get that honest.

ADDENDUM:
Legitimate Spiritual Leaders speak their language, and perform their ceremonies in their language. They teach in their language, pray in their language, and sing in their language. They speak the language of the indigenous community that they serve, and they do not perform their ceremonies in the language of the colonizer, whether it be English, Spanish, or French. The only time they use English is to interpret for members of their community who no longer speak their original language.