It gets complicated though because groups are not uniform and everyone has their own 2cents.

How does this distinction seem to you?

It's like taking a rabbit, many rabbits, for food without giving back to the ecosystem that grew and fed and created rabbits. So often there is nothing given back to the community that created the spiritual system, except a vague fuzzy feeling. And the vague fuzzy feeling can actually cause damage from its vagueness. Indigenous people objecting to cultural "borrowing" generally complain that people misrepresent processes as Indigenous when they're merely Indigenous-inspired, and that this leads to a fuzzing and distortion of Indigenous values that then adversely affects Indigenous communities. And the damage is not just spiritual. Native communities often have to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars "verifying" a distorted truth about their culture (government structure – you had a "chief" and a "council", right? prove it..) before our government will even negotiate with them. Also, distorted traditions masquerading as sure 'nuff Indigenous (rather than the more honest "inspired by Indigenous….") make it harder for displaced people of Native descent to find their way back to their roots. I knew one Native man who took his Nativeness from Hallmark posters. He was a pretty lost soul. There are enough obstacles in place between Native folks and the full renewal/expression of their cultures – why should we create one more, especially when most of us are so disconnected from the culture that we may not recognize the impact of our actions?

I have a friend who is a New Age shaman. Although I'm uncomfortable with some aspects of this, I would become more comfortable if she took the time to listen to Indigenous perspectives of her work….a diversity of Indigenous perspectives…and if she gave back in some personal, connected way to the Indigenous community.