Re: Carlos Castaneda, The teachings of Don Juan

Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa (riwaasa@indiana.edu)
22 Jan 1997 03:24:15 GMT

Ward Churchill has written an excellent essay on this topic: "Carlos
Castaneda: The Greatest Hoax since Piltdown Man" in 'Fantasies of the
Master Race', Common Courage Press, 1992. He begins with a quote from
Gary Hobson:

"Since the American public has already become accustomed to seeing the
Jerome Rothenburg 'translations,' the poetry of 'white shamans' such as
Gary Snyder, Gene Fowler, Norman Moser, Barry Gifford, David Cloutier, to
name a few, and other neo-romantic writers posing as Indians and/or
Indian experts/spokesmen (sic), such as Carlos Castaneda, Hyemeyohsts
Strom, Tony Shearer, Doug Boyd, the Baha'i influenced 'Indian' works of
Naturegraph publications, contemporary Indian writers are often
discounted or ignored since they are not following or conforming to the
molds created by those 'experts.'
-Gary Hobson
The Remembered Earth