Hi StuckandSearching
About the topic in general.
If one is a passionate anti-cultural appropriation warrior, then it is tempting to just buy into the group-think-script and start to regard all these quests for totems and ‘power animals’ of non-natives as New Age nonsense and ridicule them as well as call these authors writing about the subject - frauds:
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?topic=209.0
http://www.newagefraud.org/smf/index...sg1519#msg1519
But where does this leave a genuine seeker, who is looking for some real ‘Earth Spirituality’ connections?
Here is a youtube link, which might be useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6E1jjzc3Rk
To my mind, the man in the video sounds quite genuine and he does bring up some valid points.
Such as
how Spirit communicates, and 4 different kinds of ‘power animals’:
1. The totem animal.
2. The journey animal.
3. The messenger animal.
4. The shadow animal.
BUT. What he says about totem animals might be akin to Native American beliefs (I don’t know), because to my knowledge this is NOT Shamanism, and I am starting to appreciate what many Native Americans say:
“Shamanism is not the same thing as Native American Spirituality”.
As far as I know - in Uralic and Siberian Shamanism, we are descendants of an Animal Ancestor (& in our case) either the Bear or the Moose/Elk, which divides us into 2 totemic clans that are further divided into sub-clan totems and these ‘moieties’
“define peoples roles and responsibilities, and their relationships with each other and creation.”
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e3/ca...7eec64c676.jpg
Often matrilineal, these moieties are usually exogamous, i.e. you must marry into the opposite moiety (The Bear marries the Moose):
https://rgdn.info/assets/uploads/ima...il_perm-2-.jpg
This
somewhat parallels Australian Aboriginal kinship system, where you also marry into the opposite moiety totems and
perhaps the American Northwest Coast peoples moiety systems, such as among the Tlingit (Raven and Wolf moieties).
So if Tlingit or other Northwest Coast peoples call their Spirituality ‘Shamanism’, I wouldn’t question it or call them 'frauds' since there
seems to be parallels - some similarities found with Siberian Shamanism.
Of Altaic or Turco-Mongol power animals – The Eagle, the White Horse (as in Tulpar, Hiimori) and the Wolf come to mind first and foremost and these specific traditional Spirit Entities also overlap with Uralic beliefs.
(When the Thunderbird-Eagle initiates/empowers you & you have a “shamanic death experience” – the Eagle gifts you with the power animal – Hiimori, so that you can *shift* and journey up and down on the World Pole of the 3 Worlds).
Hiimori:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFTNWNgP-gk
So, if a person does not have Altaic or Turco-Mongol ancestry, it would be very strange for people to take those beliefs of power animals on as their own or beliefs of belonging into a specific moiety.