section_path: Decline and revitalization and tradition-preserving movements
section_name: Decline and revitalization and tradition-preserving movements
paragraph_text: Decline and revitalization and tradition-preserving movements
  
  Traditional, Indigenous shamanism is believed to be declining around the world. Whalers who frequently interacted with Inuit groups are one source of this decline in that region.
  
  In many areas, former shamans ceased to fulfill the functions in the community they used to, as they felt mocked by their own community, or regarded their own past as deprecated and were unwilling to talk about it to ethnographers.
  
  Besides personal communications of former shamans, folklore texts may narrate directly about a deterioration process. For example, a Buryat epic text details the wonderful deeds of the ancient "first shaman" Kara-Gürgän: he could even compete with God, create life, steal back the soul of the sick from God without his consent. A subsequent text laments that shamans of older times were stronger, possessing capabilities like omnividence, fortune-telling even for decades in the future, moving as fast as a bullet.
  
  In most affected areas, shamanic practices ceased to exist, with authentic shamans dying and their personal experiences dying with them. The loss of memories is not always lessened by the fact the shaman is not always the only person in a community who knows the beliefs and motives related to the local shaman-hood. Although the shaman is often believed and trusted precisely because they "accommodate" to the beliefs of the community, several parts of the knowledge related to the local shamanhood consist of personal experiences of the shaman, or root in their family life, thus, those are lost with their death. Besides that, in many cultures, the entire traditional belief system has become endangered (often together with a partial or total language shift), with the other people of the community remembering the associated beliefs and practices (or the language at all) grew old or died, many folklore memories, songs, and texts were forgotten—which may threaten even such peoples who could preserve their isolation until the middle of the 20th century, like the Nganasan.
  
  Some areas could enjoy a prolonged resistance due to their remoteness.
  
  After exemplifying the general decline even in the most remote areas, there are revitalizations or tradition-preserving efforts as a response. Besides collecting the memories, there are also tradition-preserving and even revitalization efforts, led by authentic former shamans (for example among the Sakha people and Tuvans).
  
  Native Americans in the United States do not call their traditional spiritual ways "shamanism." However, according to Richard L. Allen, research and policy analyst for the Cherokee Nation, they are regularly overwhelmed with inquiries by and about fraudulent shamans, aka ("plastic medicine people"). He adds, "One may assume that anyone claiming to be a Cherokee 'shaman, spiritual healer, or pipe-carrier', is equivalent to a modern day medicine show and snake-oil vendor."
  
  There are also neoshamanistic movements, which usually differ from traditional shamanistic practice and beliefs in significant ways, and often have more connection to the New Age communities than traditional cultures.