ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the narratives of faith and fear, presented in a preliminary typology, and an analysis that attempts to interpret the roots of fear and inconsistent recovery of shamanic worldviews. It discusses the distinctions between individual faiths and more communal belief systems. Both have important ramifications for understanding changing shamanic practices, the anthropology of violence, and for interpreting debates about cultural authenticity. Many shamanic narratives themselves become morality plays reinforcing belief systems and community behaviour or norms. The chapter examines Soviet repression and recent neo-colonialism. The widespread and archaic belief that abuse of shamanic spiritual power can rebound against shamans and their families provides a strong argument for socially salient, reverberating moral restraint in many time periods. The scope of moral restraint can be expanded or contracted by defining community in multiple ways encompassing, situationally, all indigenous peoples of Siberia, all indigenous peoples across the North, or, at times, all human beings or all living beings.
