Award-winning filmmaker and author Nicholas Clapp is holding a lecture and book signing in Goldfield on Saturday.
Clapp will talk about his latest project entitled, “Old Magic, Lives of the Desert Shamans,” which explores the day-to-day lives of desert shamans in the far west and the ability to adapt to the harsh environment.
Clapp said shamanism is a worldwide tradition that goes back thousands of years.
It’s defined as a practice that involves a shaman or medicine man achieving altered states of consciousness to encounter and interact with the spirit world and channel energy into the present world.
During such rituals, shamans practice divination and healing the sick.
Clapp said shamanism appeared in this country when the first migrations arrived thousands of years ago.
“Its purest form happens to be in our western deserts where you and I live,” he said. “It’s not on the coasts, it’s not in Hopi or Navajo land, it’s right here. All of the tribes are remarkably similar and the shamans really stand out because at the time there was no great tribal infrastructure. They had only the shaman, who was generally the head man of the tribe.”
Clapp’s curiosity spurred him to study shamanism.
He said he stumbled upon obscure works by anthropologists on the topic and decided to provide his input.
“As far as I know, there hasn’t been a book like this anywhere,” he said. “What is a shaman’s life? How does he decide he’s going to be a shaman? It’s been fun to reconstruct their lives.”
Another element of Clapp’s curiosity is the fact that there are no shamans in present day.
“It was a pretty rough profession,” he said. “It was demanding and scary because there was a general rule that if they failed in a cure, three times in a row, they were killed.”
Clapp said when diseases such as measles and small pox showed up in some American west populations, the shaman’s tactics were not effective to cure the infected tribespeople, which meant certain death to the shaman and the infected.
“There was an epidemic that hit that area and the shamans were powerless to cure people,” he said. “As a result, practically every last shaman was killed for failure to cure people. It was a tough calling.”
Clapp is a graduate of Brown University. He has received 70 film awards and Academy Award nominations.
Saturday’s lecture and book signing is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Pioneer Saloon on Highway 95 in Goldfield.
Light refreshments will be served.
Clapp’s latest book and other works can be purchased online at Amazon Books.