Customer Reviews

Return to Creation: A Survival Manual for Native and Natural People

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book conveys a living, native philosophy written by a Wampanoag story teller and writer. Medicine Story tries to draw the linear, goal-oriented 20th century person into the circular, nature-based world view of an Indian. It is a deeply philosophical and spiritual book and is a breath of fresh air to those of us who are tired of nature-dominant, capitalist thinking. Medicine Story has the gift of explaining in a poetic, magical way. You feel as if you are there with him. If you are familiar with Massachusetts, it's even better. This book crept and continues to creep into my soul. It is my antidote to stress and my guide to redefining my life, one circle at a time. I have never read anything like it.

The negative reviews here are not reviews of the book, but of the author, based on false information about him that has been circluated without actual knowledge of the author or his nation. Here is a view by a well known and respected Wampanoag, a teacher of Native Studies at the university of Maine from a letter to the author:
Thanks for sharing these stories---i have always enjoyed the manner and style You share these Visions of the Heart. So, Netomp, You have my greatest affection and support.
i will offer this as a supportive statement:

Manitonqat's unique and wondrous manner of sharing ancient and contemporary stories of the Wampanoag follows in the profoundly valued tradition of the Pauwau. Especially applied to the Indigenous Nations and Peoples of the Northeast, maintaining a People's History is both a fine art and an evocative response to the incoherence, tyranny, and cynicism of modernity. Manitonqat is one of the Wampanoag Nation's leading national treasures.

As this is offered in the deepest respect for You as a person and Your wonderfully inspiring style.
gk
gkisedtanamoogk

THIS BOOK IS A FANTASTIC REVELATION FOR NON-NATIVE PEOPLES WHO ARE CAPTIVES OF THE PREVIOUS WHITE CHRISTIAN TEACHINGS THAT PRESENT THE NATIVE PEOPLES AS UNSPIRITUAL. I FOUND THIS BOOK TO BE A GOOD CANDIDATE FOR A GUIDE TO LIVING A TRULY SPIRITUAL EXISTANCE.
IF OUR CURRENT POLITICIANS WERE FOLLOWING THESE PRECEPTS OUR WORLD WOULD BE ON A PATH OF HEALING, RATHER THAN ONE OF DESTRUCTION.

Manitonquat (Medicine Story) offers this book not only as practical information for a healthy way of life, but as a prayer for all Humankind, all brothers and sisters. It is easy to call someone a culture vulture; it is more difficult to distill what you know to be valuable and find ways to share it with others on this Earth. The time I spent with Medicine Story helped my life and his book has helped me on my journey of what some people call "the recovery from Western civilization." He not only proposes but lives the way of peace and partnership between men and women. He shares this way of peace in prisons with people society has thrown away. I don't think he deserves to be called a "plastic shaman." Read his work and see for yourself.

The attacks in other reviews are based on false information, which do not in any way reflect the author. I understand that many native peoples bitterly resent the real damage done to their cultures, including some Wamps, as they call themselves. However, attacking spiritual people trying to do positive things, out of blind rage and resentment, does not heal that damage. Any spiritual presentation has to come from an internal gestalt, an internal organization of various elements, and all such presentations are unique. Some Wampanoag don't like Manitonquat. What spiritual teacher ever lived, who did not have detractors? Manitonquat's detractors are not spiritual people, that I've seen, they know not their hearts, they do not produce useful spiritual books, they do not embody spiritual truth, and they do not spend much time helping others, that I've seen. I wish them well, and godspeed on their paths, but they do not produce much of value in service to others. The author's books The Circle Way, and Ending Violent Crime, are useful as well. The Golden Age of humanity was perhaps the Pleistocene. Manitonquat told stories in my daughter's school years ago, and I took the day off, to hear what he had to say. I had heard him speak at a National Storytelling Association event, also. Manitonquat makes me feel like a kid again, in a good way, where the world is full of wonderful lessons to learn, still magical, still beautiful. Western culture worships the material, for it has forgotten the spiritual. In many indigenous cultures, the old teach the young, for the old are close to returning to the Great Mystery, as the young have only recently come from it. There are few true elders in WhiteManCulture. Elders like him put tons of meaning into a single sentence, at times so much that it takes a while to unravel it all. He told me once that we all have the same job on the planet- helping each other out. I do some charity work, helping people no-one else helps, as a direct result of this epiphany. About a month later, an epiphany hit me, that yes, that really is true, the truth of that unfolded for me, all at once. Manitonquat reminds us that the search for light and truth is never-ending, there is always more growth. The Children of the Morning Light: Wampanoag Tales as Told By Manitonquat is worth reading only for the story of Moshaup and the Dolphins. This guy is very humble, you'd never know he has spent over 30 years creating Medicine Circle healing groups in Europe, or that he, like a fair number of native elders, has run programs in prisons for almost 40 years, for people forgotten by everyone else. You would never know of the incredible frustrations he's run into, for doing the simplest of service for others. No, he's kind of like the old priest in that Frank Capra movie of Shangri-La, just full of light, speaking simple words from a deep spiritual place. His books are simple, and extremely profound. I think I have all of his books, and read them at intervals, to get what I missed the last time. He has inspired others, including the author of Whispers of the Ancients: Native Tales for Teaching and Healing in Our Time, and Journey to the Ancestral Self: The Native Lifeway Guide to Living in Harmony With Earth Mother, Book 1 (Bk.1), that I know of, both of which are aligned with his writings. If he was Catholic, I suppose he'd be on his way to being a saint. I mean just that. He focuses totally on service to others. I've seen two Christian ministers, 3 Buddhists, and a Sufi who got to his spiritual level, living totally in the heart, but this is not common in any spiritual tradition I've seen. He is also of some Scots ancestry, and one sees faint echoes of the Celtic culture in his statements and writings, also, for he is a bard who transmits the old stories in a way that gives them life. Manitonquat told a group of people that the purpose of life is "give-away", to gather in all the awareness and stories and whatever else one can, and then to pass it out freely to all who would receive. This book is part of his give-away. It is worthy of study, and application to life. Dr Glenn Morris Path Notes of an American Ninja Master notes that some spiritual books need to be read and re-read, often, well just as with the Tao Te Ching. Manitonquat's books fall in that category.

This is one of my favorite books of all time. I continually buy them and give them to friends and students. In this book are lovely stories told by Manitonquat about a way of living according to our original instructions and open hearts. The way of the circle that includes everybody instead of the competitive way that we of the Anglo Saxon culture have been taught to live as contestants with each other competing for resources. Manitonquat learned from his grandfather a Wompanog of New England these beautiful stories and attitudes towards people and all creation. These were the people who met the first Pilgrims, the people of Metacom. It shows another way of being human, the way of beauty, not the way of violence. It gives me hope that there is another way to live a peaceful loving way.

in this book when compared to Tradtitional Wamponoag teachings. For example, we do not encourage our men to sleep with other women when their wives are pregnant. I have liitle respect for an individual who would distort his culture and teachings to make a buck. He partakes in the capitolism he claims to detest.

that people who read Return to Creation believe that Francis Talbot is sharing actual indigenous wisdom. What he is sharing is new age philisophy that has had a detrimental impact in Indian Peoples. I'm pretty confident that those giving positive reviews of the book did not grow up in an Indian community (a real one, a rez, reserve or in Indian Territory). It continuously surprises me that non-Native Peoples feel they have the right to dictate to Indian Traditionals. Francis Talbot is an exploiter. He is doing more harm than good in the prison systems and exploits the prisoners as well, bilking donations to fund a program that consists of him going into prisons and talking about himself. I feel bad for the people he has managed to misinform with his hogwash. I feel bad for the indigenous community and prisoners he continues to profit from. I am glad to know that the American Indian Movement is compiling information on his nefarious behavior.