Olga Kharitidi - truth or fiction?

A reader asked me to be more specific about Olga Kharitidi and her shamanic experiences in the Altai. Here you go:

Olga Kharitidi is a psychiatrist from Novosibirsk, a big city in Siberia. In the early nineties Kharitidi visited the Altai, where she learned about shamanic healing practices from a local female shaman called Umai. The initiation into shamanic practices profoundly changed Kharitidi's ideas about cause and treatment of mental diseases. She started to experiment with alternative healing methods, left Russia, settled in America and wrote Entering the Circle.  The book became a hit and was published in many languages. But not in Russian. That is why in Russia and the Altai almost nobody has heard of Olga Kharitidi, and it is my guess that Kharitidi likes to keep it that way.

Locals can more easily distinguish truth from fiction than outsiders. Raipon, an organisation representing minority cultures in Russia, by way of Oleg Egorov, accused Olga Kharitidi of shamelessly exploiting indigenous knowledge. The psychiatrist only briefly visited the Altai but claims to be an authority on Siberian shamanism (which of course encompasses much more than the Altai regio).  

Will continue the discussion in the next blog, meanwhile, do share your thoughts and ideas with me. Did Olga Kharitidi romanticize & exploit Siberian indigenous knowledge? And if so, what's the problem?