Is “Namaste” really a Native American word?
No. It’s a Sanskrit word–Indian from India, in other words, not American Indian. A lot of people make that mistake. Since the New Age movement is syncretic (pulls together spiritual traditions from diverse sources), many New Age spiritualists combine traditional Native American words or phrases (like Mitakuye Oyasin) with traditional words or phrases from other cultures (like Namaste, shaman, and tarot). Then, since Americans in general tend to confuse New Age spiritualism with Native American traditional religion, they assume that all the phrases used by the New Age are Native American ones, when in fact, they have diverse multicultural origins. If you’d like to more about Namaste and Sanskrit, try a website like http://202.157.161.111/ or http://sanskrit.gde.to/. Q: What about “shaman”? A: No, “shaman” isn’t an American Indian word either. It’s a Russian word that comes from the Tungus family of indigenous Siberian languages. Which makes sense, since shamanism is an indigenous Euras
