Shamanism, Spirituality, New Age Figures - Biography, Native North American Peoples - Biography, Eastern Woodland Indians - Biography

Mad Bear

Name: Mad Bear
Author: Doug Boyd
ISBN: 9780671759452

by Doug Boyd

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Overview

Mad Bear was a member of the Bear Clan of the Tuscarora Nation of the Six-Nation Iroquois Confederacy of the United States and Canada. A Native American rights-activist, he was also a medicine man and a leader with great power and influence both among his own people and cross culturally. In this personal and captivating narrative, Doug Boyd recreates Mad Bear's tales of magic, his healing powers, and Native American legends. Mad Bear creates a rich and colorful portrait of the fascinating life of this vibrant, spiritual man.

A down-to-earth, personal portrait of Mad Bear, renowned medicine man and Indian-rights activist, by the acclaimed author of the classic Rolling Thunder. Doug Boyd illuminates a life dedicated to the preservation of the earth and to the integration of spirituality into everyday reality.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Founder of the Cross-Cultural Studies program in New York City, Boyd (Rolling Thunder) narrates a dramatic thought-provoking tale of his cross-country travels with Mad Bear, a Tuscarora medicine man. Boyd portrays the aging but dynamic-sometimes downright impish-Indian-rights activist as having a balanced and profoundly insightful, if not purely psychic, mooring in his daily existence and interpersonal affairs. Mad Bear brings a supernatural dimension both to his doctoring and his larger work of building tribal and cultural bridges, and Boyd skillfully juxtaposes Mad Bear's communal methodology with a Japanese healer and teacher whose emphasis is more one-on-one. Although sometimes subtly sarcastic, Boyd's style is generally one of easygoing acceptance of his unusual travel companion and his deadpan humor is a refreshing break from overly meticulous details about Mad Bear's dizzying schedule of plane flights, hotel stays and road trips. The beginning is rather disjointed, but the strands pull together nicely for a cross-cultural spiritual summit conference. (Dec.)

Library Journal

Mad Bear, a Tuscarora Indian, activist, and healer, fought for Native rights during the 1960s and 1970s; he died in 1985. Journalist Boyd conjures the spirit and wisdom of Mad Bear in this lively memoir based on their meetings and conversations.