Not content to merely watch the weather forecast, Russia’s Winter Olympic organizers took matters into their own hands Monday, arranging for dozens of shamans to pray for snow in Sochi.

Supreme Court of Appeal has taken a giant step in recognising the wisdom of our ancestors, and the upliftment of indigenous beliefs, writes Annelie de Wet.

An octogenarian Bunun shamaness in eastern Taiwan has transmitted her powers to a septuagenarian novice in order to hold to the traditions of the indigenous Taiwanese people group against the flow of modern society

That's one way Francis Mitchell summons people he meets to keep in touch with Navajo culture. At 67, Mitchell is a Navajo medicine man, a Vietnam veteran, father of nine and mentor and spritual advisor to many.

The shaman of Xi Wuqi city wakes before sunrise on a Wednesday morning in June, piles his family into his silver Peugeot, and drives out beyond the city’s boxy mid-rises, past miles of strip-mines and coal refineries, and to the foot of a broad kelly-green hillside on the grasslands.