--- title: Who is Sherri Mitchell, and what are her Sacred Instructions? description: "Sherri Mitchell, whose Penobscot name is Weh'na Ha'mu' Kwasset, \"She Who Brings the Light\", is a lawyer, activist and author from the Penobscot Nation in Maine, and founding director of the Land Peace Foundation. Her book *Sacred Instructions* (2018) teaches…" url: "https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/wiki/who-is-sherri-mitchell-and-what-are-her-sacred-instructions/" updated: "2026-11-10" category: People tags: - all my relations - colonisation - cultural appropriation - decolonising - historical trauma - intergenerational trauma - Kiwawk - Land Peace Foundation - original instructions - Penobscot Nation - "power-loss" - right relationship - rights and responsibilities - Sacred Instructions - Sherri Mitchell - Taker culture - Wabanaki - "Weh'na Ha'mu' Kwasset" - wétiko --- # Who is Sherri Mitchell, and what are her Sacred Instructions? Sherri Mitchell, whose Penobscot name is Weh'na Ha'mu' Kwasset, "She Who Brings the Light", is a lawyer, activist and author from the Penobscot Nation in Maine, and founding director of the Land Peace Foundation. Her book *Sacred Instructions* (2018) teaches that every person is born with instructions guiding them towards their purpose, and that healing from colonisation means healing our separation from one another and from the living Earth. She writes from within her own Wabanaki tradition; Therapeutic Shamanism does not draw on her book or speak for her people, though it shares some of her concerns. ## Who is Sherri Mitchell? A Penobscot woman, born and raised on the Penobscot Indian Reservation, an island in the Penobscot River in central Maine. The Penobscot are one of the Wabanaki nations, with the Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Mi'kmaq, whose homelands lie along the waterways of Maine and the Canadian Maritimes.^[1](#note-1) She took her law degree at the University of Arizona, specialising in Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy, and worked as a lawyer before founding the Land Peace Foundation, which works for indigenous rights and the indigenous way of life. She has served as an adviser to the Indigenous Elders**Elder (True Elder).** The rarer stage beyond Adulthood. Adults decide; Elders advise. [More about this](/wiki/what-is-a-true-elder/) and Medicine Peoples Council of North and South America.^[2](#note-2) *Sacred Instructions* has been published in four languages, and she has contributed to more than a dozen anthologies.^[3](#note-3) Her book draws on the teachings of the tribal elders who helped raise her, and on her own experience. It does not describe how the Wabanaki lived before colonisation in terms of hunting, gathering or farming; it writes of a living people today, with their own language, stories and ceremonies. 1. Sherri Mitchell, *Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change* (North Atlantic Books, 2018), Chapter One, "Creation Songs". 2. Sherri Mitchell, *Sacred Instructions* (North Atlantic Books, 2018), About the Author. 3. Land Peace Foundation, "Sherri Mitchell Biography". ## What are Sacred Instructions? Guidance each of us carries from birth. In her words, "We all come into this world with a set of instructions." These instructions lead towards our highest purpose and the truths that live deep within us; she writes that they vibrate in us down to the level of our cells, that every living being has its own tone, and that together these tones make up the voice of creation. Learning to listen to that voice lets us bring our daily lives into step with our purpose. None of us, she says, is here by accident, though many of us are "out of step" with our true path.^[4](#note-4) The instructions also live in a people's way of life, in the stories, values and ceremonies handed down by the ancestors. At the close of the book she calls the sacred instructions left by the ancestors a map that can lead us back to the humanity and the connections we have lost.^[5](#note-5) This oneness, she says, is no call for everyone to become the same, because "oneness is not sameness", but a weaving together of different gifts.^[4](#note-4) 1. Sherri Mitchell, *Sacred Instructions* (North Atlantic Books, 2018), Introduction. 2. Sherri Mitchell, *Sacred Instructions* (North Atlantic Books, 2018), "Our Responsibilities". ## What does she teach about colonisation? That it has not ended. "Colonization is not only alive, it's thriving. We simply call it by different names", one of them being "progress". She likens it to an infection that spreads through a whole body, which separates a people from their values, their land, their food and water, their language and their rituals, and then imposes its own.^[6](#note-6) Underneath it lies what she calls the Myth of Separation, the belief that we are not connected to one another or to the divine, which in the West wears the disguise of rugged individualism and leaves us isolated and cut off from the natural world.^[7](#note-7) Reconnecting with the Earth is, for her, at the heart of decolonising.^[6](#note-6) The Wabanaki way of life she sets against this rests on relationship. The words "all my relations" (N'dilnabamuk) name kinship with every being, the two-legged, the four-legged, the winged, the plants, the trees and the living Earth.^[8](#note-8) This is why the Wabanaki do not see themselves even as stewards of the Earth; "We are only keepers of a way of life that is in harmony with the Earth." They are taught a responsibility to speak on behalf of the natural world, not because humans are superior, but because humans speak the language other humans understand.^[8](#note-8) 1. Sherri Mitchell, *Sacred Instructions* (North Atlantic Books, 2018), Chapter Eight, "Decolonizing". 2. Sherri Mitchell, *Sacred Instructions* (North Atlantic Books, 2018), Chapter Four, "How We Got Here". 3. Sherri Mitchell, *Sacred Instructions* (North Atlantic Books, 2018), Chapter Sixteen, "The Indigenous Way of Life". ## What does she teach about trauma and healing? That the pain of history is carried down the generations until it is faced. In her account, trauma the first generation cannot hold passes to the next as fears, sadness and anxiety whose source they cannot name, and whole groups can come to hold on to their suffering as part of who they are. What a person carrying this needs is for their trauma "to be recognized, accepted, and held gently."^[9](#note-9) Healing, for her, begins with telling the truth about shared history, including the genocide of Native peoples, and with all sides being heard. She asks for specific acknowledgement of what was done and what it led to, such as the loss of culture and the removal of children to boarding schools, rather than a blanket apology, and for the harm still happening now to stop.^[9](#note-9) See [What is trauma, and how does Therapeutic Shamanism understand it?](/wiki/what-is-trauma-and-how-does-therapeutic-shamanism-understand-it/) 1. Sherri Mitchell, *Sacred Instructions* (North Atlantic Books, 2018), Chapter Five, "Grief, Trauma, and Intimacy". ## Should non-Native people take up these teachings? Native people themselves hold different views on sharing their teachings with outsiders. Some Native activists and elders object strongly to non-Native people taking up and selling Native ceremonies; a Lakota declaration of 1993 condemned the exploitation of Lakota spirituality, naming 'shamanism' workshops among the exploiters.^[10](#note-10) See [What is 'plastic shamanism'?](/wiki/what-is-plastic-shamanism/) Mitchell's own book shows the question from the inside. One of her teachers, the elder Bennet Lyons, had never supported putting the teachings into writing, yet urged her to write the book. She read each section to a close friend, Miigam'aghan, to keep a balance between informing the wider public and "protecting what we hold most sacred", and she offers the teachings to any reader in the hope that they help light the reader's own path.^[11](#note-11) The ceremonies in the book, such as the pipe, the [sweat lodge](/wiki/what-is-a-sweat-lodge/) and the moon lodge, appear as parts of living traditions, and this answer does not present them as practices for readers. 1. "Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality", Lakota Summit V, 1993; Lisa Aldred, "Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age Commercialization of Native American Spirituality", *American Indian Quarterly* 24(3), 2000, pp. 329-352. 2. Sherri Mitchell, *Sacred Instructions* (North Atlantic Books, 2018), Acknowledgments and Introduction. ## How does Therapeutic Shamanism stand towards indigenous teaching? With gratitude, and without taking. Cultural appropriation is when people from a dominant culture take up the customs, practices or ideas of a culture that has been oppressed, without its permission and without acknowledgement, respect or real understanding, and given the history of colonial exploitation, anyone piecing together a modern shamanic path needs to be mindful of it.^[12](#note-12) For this reason Therapeutic Shamanism does not base itself on any particular indigenous culture. It builds on core shamanism, the practices found across shamanic cultures the world over, and keeps the work "culture-lite"; certain practices and beliefs may belong to particular cultures, but shamanism as a whole is the birthright of all human beings.^[13](#note-13) See [Is Western shamanism cultural appropriation?](/wiki/is-western-shamanism-cultural-appropriation/) Alongside this goes a debt. The peoples who kept shamanic and animist knowledge alive have been "the wisdom-keepers through the dark times of domestication**Domestication.** The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. [More about this](/wiki/what-does-domestication-mean/) and the Fall**The Fall.** The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. 'Fallen culture' is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. [Read the full answer](/wiki/what-is-the-fall/)", and the gratitude owed to them is immense.^[14](#note-14) That gratitude is not a claim to their ceremonies, and Therapeutic Shamanism does not speak for any indigenous people. Therapeutic Shamanism does use the phrase 'the [Original Instructions](/wiki/what-are-the-original-instructions/)', which comes from indigenous North American peoples, for the animist template of how to live in right relationship, drawn from how hunter-gatherer animists lived and translated for the present. Mitchell's Sacred Instructions are her own teaching, from her own tradition, and the two are not presented here as the same thing. 1. Paul Francis, [*Rewilding Yourself*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/rewilding-yourself/), Chapter Three, "Cultural Appropriation?". 2. Paul Francis, [*The Shamanic Journey*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/the-shamanic-journey/), Introduction, "A Word about Cultural Appropriation". 3. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Three, "Different Kinds of Shamanism"; [*Rewilding Yourself*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/rewilding-yourself/), Chapter Two, "The Lower-World Is a Spiritual Realm". ## Where do her concerns and Therapeutic Shamanism's meet? On colonisation, separation and what heals them, each in its own terms. In Therapeutic Shamanism, colonisation is the Taker cult at work, and for the Taker cult 'civilising' indigenous people has usually meant killing them and taking their land, and this is still happening now in many parts of the world.^[15](#note-15) Our separation from the living world shows up as [Power-loss](/wiki/what-is-power-loss/) on the scale of a whole culture, and is healed by reconnecting with the [Animal, Plant and Stone People](/wiki/who-are-the-animal-plant-and-stone-people/) and the living Earth, and by giving back for what we receive. See [What are Taker and Leaver cultures?](/wiki/what-are-taker-and-leaver-cultures/), [How do we reconnect with the other-than-human world and heal cultural Power-loss?](/wiki/how-do-we-reconnect-with-the-other-than-human-world-and-heal-cultural-power-loss/) and [What is right relationship and reciprocity?](/wiki/what-is-right-relationship-and-reciprocity/) Both also name a cannibal spirit of greed. Mitchell tells the Wabanaki story of Kiwawk, the Cannibal Giant, known to other Native peoples by other names, among them Wetiko and Wendigo. In her telling he sleeps until the cries of the Earth Mother wake him; his one task is to protect her, and he does it by infecting humanity with a sickness of endless consumption. The only way to put him back to sleep "is for us to wake up."^[16](#note-16) In Therapeutic Shamanism, wetiko**Wétiko.** The parasitic, cannibalistic thought-form of Taker culture (the term is from the Algonquian peoples of North America, via Jack Forbes and Paul Levy): it drives its host to consume, dominate and set itself above nature, and it infects all of us to some degree. [Read the full answer](/wiki/what-does-wetiko-mean/) is a parasitic, possessing spirit of greed and excess at the heart of Taker culture**Taker culture.** Daniel Quinn's term for the totalitarian agricultural, owning, surplus-driven way of life that takes everything and leaves nothing, and calls itself 'civilisation'. Cultural, not innate, which is why it can be changed. Used interchangeably with 'Fallen culture'. [Read the full answer](/wiki/what-are-taker-and-leaver-cultures/), held firmly in check in hunter-gatherer societies. See [What is wétiko, and what is co-wétiko?](/wiki/what-is-wetiko-and-what-is-co-wetiko/) On inherited trauma, Therapeutic Shamanism also sees our whole culture as wounded by domestication and the Fall, with those wounds passed down through how families raise children and the stories they tell; whether trauma is also passed on in the genes is still debated by scientists. See [What are ancestral burdens and how are they passed down?](/wiki/what-are-ancestral-burdens-and-how-are-they-passed-down/) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Three, "Taker Genocide". 2. Sherri Mitchell, *Sacred Instructions* (North Atlantic Books, 2018), Chapter Four, "How We Got Here". ## Where does Therapeutic Shamanism's view differ? Mostly in what it takes as its template. Therapeutic Shamanism looks to the animist hunter-gatherers who lived before farming, and holds that 'indigenous' and 'hunter-gatherer' are not the same thing. Virtually all shamanic societies today are agricultural or herding, and so to some degree touched by Taker thinking. In North America, though, colonisation came comparatively recently, so pre-agricultural knowledge and ways of thinking can still be relatively intact.^[17](#note-17) None of this is a criticism of present-day animist peoples, whose relationship with the Earth is much healthier than that of the cultures that abandoned animism; the criticism is of Taker thinking wherever it is found.^[18](#note-18) This answer makes no claim about how the Wabanaki lived in the past or live today, and the general point about Taker thinking is not a judgement on her people. Mitchell writes from the life of her own people, and her book does not frame its teaching in these terms. Her ideas are given here as hers, and Therapeutic Shamanism's as its own, side by side. 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Three, "Different Kinds of Shamanism" and "Taker Thinking Can Infect Shamanism". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Three, "Different Kinds of Shamanism". - [Is Western shamanism cultural appropriation?](/wiki/is-western-shamanism-cultural-appropriation/) - [What is 'plastic shamanism'?](/wiki/what-is-plastic-shamanism/) - [What is right relationship and reciprocity?](/wiki/what-is-right-relationship-and-reciprocity/) - [What are Taker and Leaver cultures?](/wiki/what-are-taker-and-leaver-cultures/) - [How do we reconnect with the other-than-human world and heal cultural Power-loss?](/wiki/how-do-we-reconnect-with-the-other-than-human-world-and-heal-cultural-power-loss/) - [What is trauma, and how does Therapeutic Shamanism understand it?](/wiki/what-is-trauma-and-how-does-therapeutic-shamanism-understand-it/) - [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/) (Chapter Three, the Taker cult and Indigenous peoples) - [*Rewilding Yourself*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/rewilding-yourself/) (Chapter Three, cultural appropriation) - [*The Shamanic Journey*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/the-shamanic-journey/) (Introduction, a word about cultural appropriation) - [all courses](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/shamanic-courses/)