I'm going to walk you through why you should be skeptical of posts like this and fact-check them. And the reason I'm doing this is not to belittle Native knowledge, but rather to demonstrate how Native knowledge and images of Native sagacity are often co-opted for pat stories that seem to offer an easier road than the complex, broken, and non-linear path we often walk when we experience something traumatic.
First, this post gives us a bunch of terms and facts that are very easy to search. We have "Native" terminology (Wičháŋpi Wóyute), we have a date (2019), we have an alleged study (Johns Hopkins). All of these things make the post sound more credible, but they also make the post very easy to fact check.
Let's start from "Wičháŋpi Wóyute." I'm going to use several websites to search for the origins of this term, starting with DuckDuckGo, which blessedly still allows for exact term searching. I place quotes around the term to tell DuckDuckGo to search for these words exactly.
I get seven pages of results, all but one of which are social media posts. I'm going to look at the oldest dated result and the one non-social media result. The oldest dated result I can find is an IG post that is a repost from another account called Calm.Protocol, which first put up this info Feb. 5, 2026.
The Calm.Protocol account posts "Daily reminders to slow down," and virtually all of them are in Orientalizing listicle format. ("Try this secret Japanese technique!" "An ancient shaman once said..."). They do not cite their sources for any of their "wisdom." Several people in the comments are already demanding sources.
The single non-social media result is an alternative medicine clinic that more or less specializes in massage and first posted about "Wičháŋpi Wóyute" on March 21, 2026. Safe to say they probably saw this on socials. However! They offer sources! Let's look at the sources!
Wait... None of these are from 2019. Hmmm. Okay. Still. Let's look.
I go to each of these articles, which are all blessedly open source, and I type CMND+F to search the page. If you're on a Windows, you'll use the Control key instead. Again, we have a super easy phrase to check: "Wičháŋpi Wóyute." I'll spare you a slew of screenshots, but every single one of these papers has 0 (zero) hits for this term. Okay. But the article claims this practice is Lakota, so I'll try "Lakota" instead. I get 1 (one) hit in the 2010 article. See the extract below:
Along with many contemporary health professionals, these researchers categorically rejected the Navajo belief that epilepsy is caused by sibling incest. Moreover, in Mohatt and Varvin’s (1998) cultural formulation case study, their Lakota client actually experienced a relapse of psychotic symptoms requiring acute crisis management following her participation in traditional activities. Of course, the significance of this client’s relapse in the face of ceremonial intervention remains a matter of interpretation. (Gone, 173)
Oh. Hmmm. This particular section actually has nothing to do with "Wičháŋpi Wóyute." "Star feeding" is similarly absent.
But hey, I still have a constellation of terms, a source, and a year. I can try those next.
Since I know "Wičháŋpi Wóyute" is a bust, I'm going to switch to searching "trauma," "Lakota," "Johns Hopkins," and "2019." These are all key terms that are clearly related to these claims. Putting them together is going to help me triangulate toward the year and sources I'm looking for. I'm going back to DuckDuckGo for this, and this time, I'm dropping the quotes from the search bar.
Oh hey! First hit is a Systematic review! And below this first hit on DuckDuckGo, the term "star feeding" pops back up! Great! Maybe this isn't bunk. (I tell myself knowing it's absolute bunk.)
Systematic reviews are great because they mean that someone's done a lot of work for me. Systematic reviews are macro-reviews conducted by specialists in order to survey a field. The person or people conducting the review gather all the relevant sources they can find and perform a meta-analysis (great big analysis) on an aspect of the literature to date. Meta-analyses can still cover a lot of ground, but the goals of these studies are to point out strengths and weaknesses in the field. They often point to areas that a researcher wants to advocate for, such as research on systemically underprivileged and excluded populations like indigenous peoples. So again, promising.
I'm going to repeat what I did before, searching the systematic review. The first thing I notice is that it was not written by Johns Hopkins researchers--they're from Montana State U--so this isn't the article I'm looking for. But it might still give me a lead. First I check our "Wičháŋpi Wóyute," again using that CMND+F search. No hits. Then I try "Lakota." Here, I have more luck. The authors cite Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart several times, and a quick search back on DuckDuckGo reveals she's still alive and she researches historical trauma in the Lakota context. Let's put a pin in that for a moment and go on to:
But wait! The systematic review is housed at PubMed! What better place to find a Johns Hopkins article from 2019? So I'm going to repeat my search within the context of this database.
One of the great things about academic databases like this is that you can often narrow down to a specific year, so I'm going to do that with that little bar graph over on the left and narrow my results to 2019.
Two articles! And one of them is about culturally responsive care in Indigenous communities! Could this be??? IT IS!!! It was written by Johns Hopkins researchers! Bless. This must be it. Now I'll just search Wičháŋpi Wóyute and ...
Fuck. Phrase not found. (See search bar at bottom.)
Searching "Lakota" turns up Dr. Brave Heart again. Let me just see what those sections have to say. Here is the most relevant quote:
Burgeoning viewpoints assert that if colonialism and intergenerational historical loss are recognized as the identified problem, it follows that interventions with AI/ANs should be focused on cultural reassertion and revitalization at the individual and community level (Brave Heart et al., 2011; Gone & Trimble, 2012; Goodkind et al., 2015). In a qualitative study, AI elders discussed that healing from intergenerational historical trauma involves tribal cultural reclamation, including speaking one’s native language, and spirituality (Grayshield et al., 2015). (O'Keefe et al. 5)
Nothing about a specific grief ritual. Instead, what this section is saying is that incorporating culturally specific tribal beliefs may be a key part of helping those within the AI/AN (American Indian/American Native) community to heal from historical trauma.
As a last ditch, I'm going to search "grief" and "ritual" to see if they cite any specific rituals, but I think you can all see where this is going at this point. "Grief" has two hits, neither of which mention a ritual, and "ritual" itself has 8 hits, but that's because "ritual" occurs within the word "spiritual" and that's what all 8 hits end up being.
Nowhere does this study say there is some magic Lakota ritual that is more efficacious than current modes of grief, trauma, and PTSD treatment. Rather, what it advocates is that incorporating culturally specific practices into treatments within tribal contexts may be more effective when helping people deal with historical trauma.
I know one of you is going to say, "but the initial article says PTSD and you didn't check that at all." I did. But I'm tired.
When you switch out trauma for PTSD in this same search scenario, you get 11 articles, three of which are relevant. One is the above Johns Hopkins study. The other two are:
Brave Heart MYH, Chase J, Myers O, Elkins J, Skipper B, Schmitt C, Mootz J, Waldorf VA. Iwankapiya American Indian pilot clinical trial: Historical trauma and group interpersonal psychotherapy. Psychotherapy (Chic). 2020 Jun;57(2):184-196. doi: 10.1037/pst0000267. Epub 2019 Dec 2. PMID: 31789541; PMCID: PMC8216771.
(↑There's Dr. Brave Heart. Told you we'd get back to her.)
Hartmann WE, Wendt DC, Burrage RL, Pomerville A, Gone JP. American Indian historical trauma: Anticolonial prescriptions for healing, resilience, and survivance. Am Psychol. 2019 Jan;74(1):6-19. doi: 10.1037/amp0000326. PMID: 30652896; PMCID: PMC6338218.
You know where the researchers who wrote these papers are from? Not Johns Hopkins! You know what these articles talk about? Not Wičháŋpi Wóyute!
Dr. Brave Heart's paper does make mention of a specific Lakota practice, the "wiping of tears" exercise, but again, nowhere does it claim that this is a magic cure-all. She and her research cohort combined this practice with Group Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) and Historical Trauma and Unresolved Grief Intervention (HTUG). They note that while this approach was effective, IPT on its own was also effective.
My last little nugget for this is going to be searching "wiping of tears" to see if it got bastardized into the concept of "star feeding" somehow. One of the things that means I know this is reliable is that a Lakota researcher is using it, and that when I search it, several tribal websites and newspapers pop up. Actual natives are actually writing about this. Ope, look! Here's Sheila Jumping Bull recording her participation in one of these ceremonies!
A Wiping of the Tears ceremony is where you call upon your ancestors and those who have passed before you to come and help heal you -- and take away your pain. As the medicine man sings these songs, these sacred songs, these ceremonial songs, you pray, and you ask for their guidance, their strength, their love, and their help.
No stones. No other small objects. No memory release. Just singing and praying, guided by a spiritual leader. That's not to say this practice isn't powerful and worthwhile, but it's not what was described above. What was described above is, more than likely, AI slop.
BUT I DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO DO THIS MUCH RESEARCH
No. You don't. I spent a hour doing this much research because I was salty and wanted to prove a point and I was avoiding my own work. However, my initial DuckDuckGo search took all of thirty seconds. And it was enough to prove to me that the article was sketch and likely originated on social media. And when you find such an article, the best thing you can do is just not circulate it and maybe let the person who did circulate it know that it's bunk, especially if it's someone you care about. I've fucked up and reblogged AI slop in the past. But folks let me know, and I took it down. That's all you have to do. The world is full of misinformation and we all fuck up from time to time. And that's okay. Just own your mistake and rectify it. And maybe do a quick search next time.
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