In September 2017, the University Club in Santa Barbara hosted an event in the lecture series Anthropology Straight Up on “Psychics, Mediums, and Shamans.” For Kohanya Groff the large audience was no surprise. As founder and CEO of BOAS Network (“BOAS” stands for “Broadening Anthropology’s Spectrum” and also recalls Franz Boas, the Columbia University professor who is considered the father of American anthropology), a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing a forum for anthropology entertainment, information, and education, she knows that shamans sell. What would come as a surprise to anyone expecting the typical academic, hands-off approach to the subject was the presence of a second speaker on the bill, Tony Morris, an executive with a different area nonprofit who identifies as a psychic medium. For a fee of $140 per hour, Morris works with his clients by meditating about them in order to access information, much of it concerning the future, that he claims comes from “the other side.”
Put the two together, and you have the potential for conflict. Groff, who earned her PhD in anthropology at UC Riverside studying Chumash shamans and neo-shamans, necessarily has a sharp eye for inconsistencies and mixed messages in the origin stories of self-proclaimed Native American mystics. Neo-shamans are those who have not been trained by a traditional shaman or any member of an indigenous American culture, but rather rely on books and experimentation to achieve their sense of their own psychic status.
In this case, however, the two form an unlikely truce, as Groff the anthropologist extends Morris the psychic medium something like the benefit of the doubt in her talk. For his part, Morris relishes the opportunity to describe his process next to someone from the scientific community who understands that various kinds of shamanism have existed at many times and in many places throughout recorded history, and will no doubt continue.