New Age concepts have stripped original indigenous spirituality of its humanity, further dehumanizing and reconstructing it to become part of a homogenous world view.
       This reconstruction removes any "offensive" smell, taste, sound, or sight from the message by lifting it from the environments of remnant indigenous peoples, and rendering it safe, sanitized, deodorized, and easy to understand.   Eager, full-bellied "searchers", with time on their hands and a penchant for the comfortable study and effortless absorption of supposed "ancient knowledge, are drawn to these texts.  But the average uninformed reader may be drawn in as well.
       People who consider these types of fraudulent narratives harmless, but embrace the message, are like “hunters” who prefer to buy their meat from the counter.  They prefer to remain aloof from the realities of death and pain, and ignorant of the responsibilities carried by the butcher who must inevitably wash the blood and guts from his hands.
       To go to the actual present day environments of Indigenous peoples involves an element of danger, of risk, and certainly--of discomfort.   Potential students would have to become part of the People to be taught in a traditional way.  That infers commitment, patience, and a substantial amount of time.  It is so much more convenient to skip all that and sit in an easy chair with a book, imagining one’s self to be "studying" the authentic ways, vicariously soaking up the knowledge and spirituality of the Indigenous.
        Indigenous spirituality cannot be separated from culture. It cannot be removed from its environment.  It is a part of the People.  To understand it, one must be part of the People.  This is why unrelated spiritual hunters always come away with only misunderstood pieces of a puzzle.  There are no individual truths to be found in indigenous Tribal knowledge, the truths are social, shared, and intimately part of the whole animate body of the people.
        Western civilization has done it best to isolate man from his environment, his culture, his social relationships, and shared secrets.  For this reason, the truth of indigenous knowledge and spirit will remain inaccessible until he recaptures his tribal and natural world relationships.
       Many new-age authors rationalize this kind of "learning" by implying that the true indigenous peoples have vanished and are now represented by only a few wandering "teachers”.
        Such is the contention of Marlo Morgan, author of Mutant Message Down Under and its sequel, Message From Forever.  She implies that all the "true" Aborigines are gone, or going, and that she was selected by Providence to be the messenger of the "last true band".  It is a conveniently contrived way to offer the reader a supposedly validated message from an original indigenous people without them having to make the journey, or experience the reality, themselves.
         This present day western concept, i.e. that experience can be gained without actually having an experience, comes from a belief that the written word can endow men with an experience of truth--a concept that is entirely alien to indigenous Peoples around the world.  Indigenous knowledge, and oral tradition, is effective because it utilizes concepts which are familiar in the day-to-day life of the People, and because it occurs in the environment of its foundation. To be taught ancient ways around a night fire, with stars overhead, sparks flirting with the wind, the smell of smoke and sweat and earth, the sound of familiar voices, and the feel of relationship and belonging—is a portion of the message which can not be experienced through text or imagination. Without the environment of the teaching, what is recorded of the message is only a shadow of itself.  Western civilization takes its knowledge from what it thinks it understands about the world. Its perceptions are formed not from its own experiences but from someone else's perceptions of someone else's perceptions of someone else's experiences and on and on....
        With a continuing colonial spirit--arrogant, greedy, lazy, contemptuous and impersonal--present day authors like Morgan attempt to imply that they have been privy to these experiences. By pretending authenticity and relationship, they ravage, plunder, and disrespect the true perspective while incorrectly glorifying what they what they perceive to be the essence of indigenous spiritual life and culture, all the while adapting it to their own purposes of profit.
        Western pundits point to all the accomplishments that civilization has achieved for its subjects, ascribing the successes in great part to the accumulation of written knowledge and wisdom.  If that is so, why then is there a new age movement at all?  Why was this great civilized experiment unable to convey, through its accumulated published works, a message of truth that is spiritually satisfying to its children? Why is there such a great exodus from Christian movements toward Indigenous and otherwise "uncivilized" ancient understanding if the methods and accumulated wisdom of civilization is superior?  Why do school children murder their fellows?  Why do millions starve in a world capable of feeding them?  Where is this supposed superiority?  Could it be that the whole pyramid of civilization has gotten so high, that the crumbling fraud of its foundation can only be seen by those who are not looking up, but down?  It is as if all of mankind is on a ladder with the leaders daily constructing rungs that reach higher and higher into the firmament, while the lower rungs are rotting.  They constantly exhort us not to look down but to look to technology and the future as they furiously struggle to draw our attention away from the crumbling structure beneath us.  Why would they do this?  Because many of them suppose that by climbing higher and higher we will someday eliminate the need for those original foundations, and reach a level of achievement where man will evolve beyond the ladder.  Others, with their accumulated wealth, count on their private jets to whisk them away should the ladder begin to fall.
        It is the last way in which indigenous peoples can be exploited.  Everything else is familiar.  Our foods, natural resources, and lands have been taken or altered so they will no longer support the ancient ways of life.  Our names have been appropriated for usable nouns. Our images have been used for entertainment, our arts copied and sold as novelties or antiquities, even our bones dug up as objects of study or curiosity. Why should our most sacred ceremonies and spiritual concepts be free from this continued onslaught from the children of Colonialism, Manifest Destiny and progress?  And who says they must be represented accurately or respectfully?  After all, this is the final frontier of colonization. The scavengers have picked over our bones long enough.  Now their children are intent on devouring our minds and spirits—because, as the price of their ancestor’s conquest, they have lost their own.