Sun Bear

   Among the most well-known Native American medicine people who have been willing, indeed eager, to teach non-Native people about their practices and worldview. In response to his condemnation (by the American Indian Movement, among others) as inauthentic, especially on the grounds of his charging clients to participate in sweat lodges and other ceremonies, Sun Bear argued vociferously that cooperation, sharing, and global harmony were more important than what he saw as parochialism and meanness. His Bear Tribe Medicine Society continues, as does the Deer Tribe, in the founding of which he had some influence. Both are largely run by and attractive to non-Native people interested in neo-shamanism of a clearly New Age kind.