Encounters with Star People: Untold Stories of American Indians

Ardy Sixkiller Clarke's "Encounters with Star People: Untold Stories of American Indians" occupies an outstanding, unique and very valuable place in the now considerable library of "alien abduction" or "close encounter" literature for several very good reasons.Firstly, it is to my knowledge the only book by a professional scholar of American Indian background about American Indian encounters with beings associated with UFOS--call them "star people," "visitors," or what you will.Secondly, it is the result of the author's own field work conducted in her spare time, primarily in American Indian communities, over a number of years. She clearly has a gift for establishing rapport with her subjects, who freely tell her, without hypnosis, the most extraordinary stories.Thirdly, Clarke's commentaries and the stories themselves are set in the context of traditional American Indian beliefs, apparently common across many tribes, that today's tribal members are in fact descended from people from the stars.Fourthly, the stories which Clarke relates run the gamut of the varieties of "high strangeness" stories related by many other witnesses to UFO phenomena and the purported beings associated with them, but they do so with unique, often bizarre twists.The story about a family that regularly witnessed cars filled with gawky, oddly dressed beings inside whole cars that are literally beamed down to the ground from a hovering ship is an example of one such tale. It gives new meaning to the myths of the so-called "men in black."Fifthly, the stories also vividly convey the anonymous witnesses' highly varied reactions and responses to their experiences, from utter revulsion and rejection to feelings of friendship and even kinship with the beings.Moreover, Clarke succeeds in conveying to her readers, in many different ways, what it must feel like to be an American Indian living on a reservation, on the margins of mainstream American life, often in very remote and isolated settings.One story, in which a man relates his experiences of seeing a UFO outside his window while attending a boarding school run by severely strict and harsh Roman Catholic priests and nuns, made a strong impression on me. The narrator describes the UFO sightings at his school as having a profound subconscious impact upon everyone in the school which ultimately led to his liberation from it. The narrator interpreted the UFOs and the beings within them as his liberators.Over more than a quarter century of familiarity with UFO-witness-related stories since the days when I wrote my book length investigation of Whitley Strieber's "visitor" experiences, I have never encountered such a tale in which UFOs intervened to liberate a young person from a process designed to separated him from his own culture and traditions in the interest of presumably saving his soul.While Clarke does not explicitly state that American Indians are still recovering from the process of losing to the "white man" in the great march of manifest destiny, reading the narratives in her book makes it abundantly clear that American Indians are very much a people who are coping with huge issues of identity and family as a result of the the tragic events that occurred to their ancestors as land, traditional knowledge, and lives were lost in great measure."Encounters with Star People" raises more questions than it answers, and that is one of Clarke's greatest accomplishments.If one believes oneself to be descended from star people, but the ones whom one meets treat one coldly, what does that mean?On the other hand, if the extraordinary beings are understood by some to be helping people in distress, can others of us call on them for help--and if so, how?Could we open a wider dialogue about human interactions with strange beings who seem to live beside us, embracing stories of semi-material beings from other cultures around the world?Clarke's book is a good starting point for embracing such questions, taking them to heart, and listening for answers, both from within ourselves, from others like us, and perhaps from others not like us. It has not hard and fast answers, no pat interpretations, much to its credit.This is a book that, once opened, is hard to put down, for the reason that so many of the narrators speak in their own unique voices. Clarke clearly has great listening skill, and must have taken great pains to accurately reflect the statements of her narrators, as well as to describe the settings in which the stories were told.Although the narrators are all anonymous, one cannot help but feel that, by the end of the book, one has gotten to know them personally. After all, they have just shared with the reader some of their greatest secrets.I hope that the readership for this book will grow and grow, and cause non-Indian readers in the US and in other parts of the world to reflect on the cultural and personal considerations that need to be taken into account when listening to stories told by people pushed to the side of the dominant society by so-called forces of progress.Ed Conroy Author of "Report on 'Communion,'" (Morrow, 1989; Avon 1990)

This book is a fresh look at UFO encounters and I would rate it higher than 5 stars if I could! If you are interested in reading about Native American encounters with UFO’s and aliens, and you want some first-hand accounts, this book is a must have. I applaud the author who must be HIGHLY respected and trusted in the Native American community, because she has brought information to the reader that otherwise would not have been accessible.“Encounters With Star People” is an excellent book with information that wasn’t easy to obtain, and it goes beyond the routine stories about alien contact and UFO's and gives information from a Native American perspective. I consider it to be a “rare find” because the author has been entrusted with accounts of sightings and contacts that would not generally be seen in books, or on television programs dealing with that topic, since Native Americans do not generally speak of these things to the press or to people they don’t know. It’s a matter of trust and there are many secret things that are known within the Indian community, but will never be revealed to outsiders. The fact that this author was entrusted with so much information and allowed to publish it is a testimony to the trust she has within the Native American communities across the country and it’s a privilege to be able to read this book.With the exception of a few reports given by those involved in law enforcement, Native Americans usually only communicate their personal experiences to people they know and trust. Their tradition is generally oral and RARELY will you find their stories in books dedicated to their stories, as told by them. So, unless you are Native American (or closely accepted by the members of the community), this is one of the few opportunities to have this type of information available to you. You may find books that are full of third-hand stories of encounters, written by outside researchers, but what makes this book so unique is that the reports were given FIRST-HAND to the author, who is also Native American. These stories not only describe the encounters, but they also reveal the individuals’ beliefs and give direct insight into their oral traditions, as opposed to speculations by researchers and anthropologists.If you want to know how Native Americans think and what is really believed in their traditions, you need to go to the source, but that is not always possible. They are a very spiritual people and the elders have always KNOWN about these contacts, but that information is not for general consumption and you must earn their trust. They are not given to sensationalizing or fabricating their accounts, so if they can speak of it, and you’ve earned their trust, they are candid and you can believe what you hear.If you are interested in UFO encounters and want fresh information, THIS BOOK IS A MUST READ!