The Horse Boy<\/em><\/a>, a documentary film now out on DVD, as well as the book of the same title.<\/p>\nSee it for the shamanism, at least, even if you know no autistic children.<\/p>\n
(Actually, I have horse and donkey-owning friends whose autistic son also improves when riding, but they have not taken him to Mongolian shamans. Perhaps they wonder if they should.)<\/p>\n
Mongolian shamanism was officially suppressed when the country was Communist. Even as Rowan’s parents seek the shamans’ help, I could not help but wonder if their coming halfway around the world was also validating the shamans, from the latter’s point of view.<\/p>\n
No camera can capture the essence of shamanism, but it is still good to see how the externals are managed. And the final two-day ride to the reindeer people’s shaman is just gorgeous\u00a0 footage.<\/p>\n
One shaman lays part of the problem on a relative of Rowan’s mother, a relative whom she admits was mentally ill. That is a hard description of reality for the psychology professor to hear, you might suspect. Our society does not normally blame any problems on dead ancestors. (I want to come back to this topic in a future post.)<\/p>\n
Yet Rowan’s degree of improvement at the end is undeniable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When a psychology professor and a human-rights activist\/journalist have an autistic son, their lives become incredibly difficult. Among other things, little Rowan never learns bowel control, and like many autistic children, he is prone to screaming, inconsolable tantrums. But his parents live in rural Texas, and they discover when Rupert is 2 years old that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[120,36,11],"class_list":["post-1546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mongolia","tag-movies","tag-shamanism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-oW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6430,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6430","url_meta":{"origin":1546,"position":0},"title":"Anthropologist Describes Rebirth of Mongolian Shamanism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A news release from the MIT News Office carries the subhead, \"MIT anthropologist finds that after Soviet domination, a rebirth of shamanism helped Mongolia rewrite its own history.\" The release continues, In 1990, as the Soviet Union was disintegrating, Mongolia, long a satellite of the U.S.S.R., regained its independence. Socialism\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"anthropology\"","block_context":{"text":"anthropology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=anthropology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsoffice.mit.edu\/sites\/mit.edu.newsoffice\/files\/styles\/news_article_image_top_slideshow\/public\/images\/2013\/20131213180343-0_0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6561,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6561","url_meta":{"origin":1546,"position":1},"title":"The “Horse Boy” and the Shamans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"If you saw the 2009\u00a0 documentary The Horse Boy, about Rowan, the autistic boy who is helped somewhat by horseback riding and by Mongolian shamans, there is more to the story. (There is also a book, The Horse Boy: A Memoir of Healing, published in 2010.) Before it was released\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"childhood\"","block_context":{"text":"childhood","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=childhood"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8198,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8198","url_meta":{"origin":1546,"position":2},"title":"Pentagram Pizza at the Mongolian Grill","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Some links worth exploring: \u2022 In post-Soviet Mongolia, shamanism is a \"growth industry,\" says an MIT anthropologist. In Manuduhai Buyandelger's Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia, she writes how, \"shamanism is a historical memory for people who lost parts of their ancestral homeland, and who had been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Mongolia\"","block_context":{"text":"Mongolia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=mongolia"},"img":{"alt_text":"pentagrampizza","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/pentagrampizza-126x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3994,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3994","url_meta":{"origin":1546,"position":3},"title":"Introduction to Mongolian Shamanism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Introductory ten-minute video about Mongolian shamanism, revived in the post-Communist decades. Just enjoy the visuals, unless you understand the language. Jenghiz Khan shows up, of course, as does Buddhism. This well-made video shows the drumming and trance dancing of both male and female shamans. Some of the drums seem to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Mongolia\"","block_context":{"text":"Mongolia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=mongolia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9017,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9017","url_meta":{"origin":1546,"position":4},"title":"On Michael Harner (1929\u20132018)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 6, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The news of Michael Harner's passing has been going around, and of course some magical practitioners have to react by disrespecting him. You might well have heard the usual string of insults: he is an academic poser, he's a fake . . . a cultural imperialist . . . from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"shamanism\"","block_context":{"text":"shamanism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=shamanism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/michael_drum.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1674,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1674","url_meta":{"origin":1546,"position":5},"title":"Is Your Teen Involved in Shamanism?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 14, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been out in the woods the last few days, so meanwhile, here's something on the worrisome increase in teen shamanism. Your dog could be a shaman's helper too.","rel":"","context":"In \"dogs\"","block_context":{"text":"dogs","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dogs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1546"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1550,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions\/1550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}