Brown, Michael Forbes

   The Lambert Professor of Anthropology and Latin American Studies at Williams College, Massachusetts, Brown authored books including Tsewa’s Gift: Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society (1986), The Channeling Zone (1997), and Who Owns Native Culture? (2003). Brown’s research on Amazonian shamanism led him to evaluate engagements between indigenous shamans and neo-shamans. As such, he is one of the few scholars to have offered a sensitive yet critical analysis of neoshamanisms, noting in particular that contemporary practitioners tend to ignore the “Dark Side of the Shaman” such as sorcery; he has also problematized the issue of neo-shamanic appropriations of indigenous religions, as well as the “copyrighting” of culture more generally.

   See also Sharon, Douglas.