my boyfriend is ahtna athabascan, and his great-uncle or some-such was a shaman.
there is a family story about how there was some "malignant" shaman putting some kind of curse on the clan, so he went into a dreaming state and "battled" it out with the shaman. so i imagine if this were to be true, so could the opposite?
the shamans from up here were regarded with a stigma of fear (they were allowed to take any woman/girl they chose, so many female elders' memories consist of hiding from shamans). and from what i have heard, they didn't use entheogens or oneirogens to speak of. just miscellaneous bones and feathers and herbs.
but i have read that many years ago, there were amanita shamans (amanitas grow EVERYWHERE up here) that would inbibe in caribou/reigndeer/moose urine (after they ate amanitas ofc).
