My first extended visit to Aleksandra, at her invitation, was in 1993, to her home Belaia Gora, when we also travelled to nearby villages of the Abei region.
In 2000, after living with and/or working with Aleksandra periodically since 1993, I invited her to participate with me in a large public conference on "ethnomedicine" in Germany. The organizers were asking anthropologists to produce their "shamans", in a way that made me somewhat uncomfortable. Consulting Aleksandra, we decided that she need not to bring her famous father's shamanic cloak (necessitating an assistent on the trip), nor did she need to perform a séance "for show", even if organizers were hoping that she would. She is a healer, not an entertainer.







In: Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer 
Shamans, Spirituality and Cultural Revitalization. 
Explorations in Siberia and Beyond.