Bad Medicine: Phony Shamans Prey on the Desperate and the Ill : Spirituality: Charlatans operate in cities, far from their homes, and charge exorbitant fees. Asking for money is the tip-off, legitimate tribal healers say--doing so is forbidden.

The mystique of pulsing drums and chanting singers, healing rituals depicted in movies such as “Dances With Wolves,” is causing headaches among authentic Native American medicine men.

Non-Indians with terminal diseases such as AIDS or cancer are seeking them out in growing numbers for cures. New-Agers and others, forsaking their own heritage, offer cash to attend spiritual ceremonies.

Of even more concern to tribal spokesmen are what they call “plastic” medicine men, or frauds posing as medicine men. Often living in the cities, they charge exorbitant prices for healing and spiritual ceremonies.

Indian leaders believe medicine men lose their powers and stir up evil and disharmony if they leave the place where the Creator gave them their powers.

“A lot of their power comes from the area where they were born,” said Charles Cambridge, a Navajo and anthropologist who teaches ethnic studies at the University of Colorado in Denver.

Cambridge belongs to the Folded Arms Clan with family lands near Shiprock, N. M., on the Navajo reservation.

Cambridge says most fraudulent medicine men fall into two categories--apprentices who dropped out, and untrained people who “decided to con non-Indians for economic reasons.”

He believes that when an authentic medicine man moves to the city for economic reasons, he has become selfish and will start losing his powers.

“The cures and rituals people will undergo with him become dangerous because these rituals have become an evil force--everything that is done becomes disruptive instead of healing,” Cambridge said.

Rick Two Dogs, a respected Oglala Lakota medicine man at Porcupine on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, traces his medicine-man lineage back at least 250 years.

He says when he received his vision, he was told to stay there and help his people.

“If you are an authentic medicine man, the powers you draw from the Earth are here; the people we are supposed to help are here,” said Two Dogs. “The gift to heal follows the blood line.”

“After the movie ‘Dances With Wolves,’ we’ve had a lot of people with Sioux blood using that as a springboard to line their own pockets” by posing as spiritual healers, said Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota and publisher of Indian Country Today in Rapid City, S.D.

His newspaper has an ongoing series of stories about the problem.

“It is like someone showed up in Denver with a black robe and white collar saying he’s an ordained Catholic priest, simply because it’s something he thinks he should do,” Giago said.

He says heredity is the true test of a shaman, or medicine man.

“If you can find a medicine man who started three or four years ago because he had a dream, that’s a bunch of baloney,” Giago said. “It takes decades of instruction to become a legitimately recognized holy man of any tribe.”

The charging of fees--up to thousands of dollars to “cure” a terminally ill AIDS or cancer patient--is the big tip-off the medicine man is a fraud.

“Traditional medicine men are not allowed to charge a fee,” said Two Dogs. “If people want to give us something, we’ll accept it. But we can’t ask for a fee.”

Such gifts usually include tobacco, food, clothing or other useful items, to show respect and appreciation for the medicine man’s service.

Two Dogs, 43, says the last two years has seen a sharp increase in non-Indians seeking out medicine men, but the trend began a decade ago.

Two Dogs says terminally ill white people approach him on the reservation for cures. Others ask him to teach them the Lakota spiritual ways.

“I’ve had people approach me with cancer and a few people with AIDS, but I said I can’t help them,” Two Dogs said. The first thing they would say is, ‘I would give you $5,000 or $10,000. . . . ‘ I say, ‘I can’t help you because of the way you approached me. It is not a question of money.’

“A lot of them want to learn the spiritual ways. I say, ‘I can’t teach you these ways. . . . You can pray in any way you want to, but to learn the true Lakota way you must be a Lakota.’ ”

“Many passing themselves off as medicine men will mix approaches” used by different tribes, said John Compton, an elder of the Brule Sioux of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota and now a director in the federally funded National Native Elders Health Care Resource Center in Denver.

“More and more stuff is being published by these people. Sun Bear made big bucks selling a lot of how-to-do-it books. This is sad because a lot of people out there really are seeking guidance and spiritual renewal and they’re ripe for this kind of stuff.”

Terry Knight, 45, spiritual spokesman for the Ute Mountain Ute tribe in southwestern Colorado and son of a respected Ute medicine man, Charley Knight, describes himself as a “fledgling ceremonial person.”

“A lot of people rush into this with the intent of making money and being recognized as a medicine man,” Knight said. “The true medicine man is not into that. It’s a lifelong job, a 24-hour-a-day job, a very tough job. I’m in no hurry to become a medicine man.”

Knight said he has been approached by non-Indians to perform ceremonies “and it’s very tempting indeed. But I just tell them I can’t do it. It would just be sacrilegious.”

Asked how a Ute becomes a medicine man, Knight replied: “It’s up to the Creator and the grandfather spirit that will approve and say you are worthy. . . . You’ve got to have the gift from the Creator and grow into it.”