New Age Tragedy in Sedona: Non-Indians in the Sweat Lodge

[Why Syzygy]

New Age Tragedy in Sedona: Non-Indians in the Sweat Lodge
By Johnny P. Flynn
October 12, 2009

(...)Stealing the Religion?

First of all, there’s the question of the relationship of Indian religion to American culture. Non-Indians have been making a lucrative business out of the appropriation of Native ceremonies for years. Ray’s weeklong event in Sedona cost each participant more than $9,000. A search of any number of Web sites advertising these “Indian ceremonies” will turn up sweat lodges that average over $100 per event, and four-day “vision quests” going for around five hundred dollars, “all meals included” and “Visa and MasterCard accepted.”

Indians all across the country are upset, saying white people stole the land, killed the buffalo, and now want to steal the religion. The trouble is that most indigenous people in the Americas identify as Christian. Even the Native American Church, that features peyote as a “sacrament,” is incorporated as a church and uses the Bible as part of the altar display.

The origin of the peyote church can be traced to the late 19th century, the same time as the Ghost Dance, and shares a foundation from Christian eschatology. One of the central myths of the Native American Church is how a twenty-foot-tall Jesus came to Earth and saw the treatment of Indian people and began to cry. Wherever the tears hit the ground peyote grew, and so the buttons of the hallucinogenic plant are called the “tears of Jesus,” and visions generated by eating these tears allow participants to “see what Jesus saw.” (...)


The sweat lodge is considered the womb of the Mother Earth, a living being, so it must breathe in order for it to participate in the ceremony. News accounts out of Sedona indicate that Ray’s sweat lodge was covered in plastic sheeting. As I have tracked the news stories and anecdotes of sweat lodge deaths and near-disasters, every one of them was covered with plastic sheeting or plastic tarps.

Missed by many who use the lodge is its fundamental purpose of celebrating creation and the creator as emerging from the principle of the feminine.

In my tribe, women control the sweat lodge. While men may tend the fire, brings the rocks, or be the one who pours the water, the lodge is “owned” by the women. They decide when; usually on the full or new moons. They decide who attends, and where the lodge is to be built. Participants become brothers and sisters in the womb and emergence allows a new start purified of past events or illnesses, spiritual or physical. (...)


http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religionandtheology/1906/new_age_tragedy_in_sedona%3A_non-indians_in_the_sweat_lodge__/

[sharp_stick]

1. As with all religions

the sheep will be fleeced for everything they've got.

[Warpy]

2. Unfortunately, the translation from their culture to ours is incomplete,

to say the very least. Their ceremonies come with important safeguards so that nobody gets badly hurt. Ours don't. Their ceremonies come with a lot of spiritual framework to guide the participants. Ours don't.

I've found that traditions carried across cultural lines soon bear little resemblance to the original and the poor translations are often offensive to the original culture.

I think it's really the massive New Age hucksterism that is the most offensive thing here even more than the pallid imitations of the real thing being offered to spiritual tourists.

One should always tread lightly when confronting cross cultural ideas. The New Agers, alas, have been treading with clogs.

[rrneck]

3. Well said. nt

[Odin2005]

7. I've noticed this with Buddhism in the West

Many things that are considered "Buddhist" by Westerners is really Taoism and traditional East Asian superstitions imported into the Mahayana form of Buddhism popular in East Asia. The comparison with Theravada Buddhism, which is effectively a kind of secular humanism in a South Asian cultural context, is stark. The Buddha himself was effectively an Atheist, part of an ancient South Asian empiricist tradition remarkably similar to the Epicureans and Atomists of the Classical Mediterranean, the main difference is that the South Asians had a greater focus on psychology than did the Greeks.

[tama]

4. Aho

The word "sauna" come's from my language and we often discuss (while having a good sauna :)) how funny and weird and stupid saunas and sauna habits foreigners have... :D

That does not mean that our "original" sauna culture would be uniform, no, we also have lot of variety. And when people from other cultures come to visit our land, we like to share our customs with them and invite our guests to experience sauna. Many of our guests think we want to torture them - get them naked, into very hot dark place and whipped with birch branches and then into cold lake or even snow... :D but most, for some peculiar reason, like the experience. :D

In our public swimming pools there are usually two saunas, at least on mens side. One for mellow löyly ('löyly' means originally 'spirit' or 'soul', the water thrown on hot rocks) and one for löyly contests, which mainly older males like - to warm their old chilly bones and show whose the man. If and when a foreigner beats locals in löyly contest we admire him greatly! :D So I understand that there are also many kinds of sweat seremonies, some for warriors and warrior minded, others for other purposes. Of course a löyly contest or a warrior sweat shouldn't be forced on anybody but engaged only knowingly and willingly.

Some time ago I had the honour to participate in sweat seremony at a local ecovillage, given by a visiting Mexican temascalero. I have also heard stories of not so nice sweats but this was most beautifull and moving experience, our temascalero friend was very skillfull and dedicated to his work. He didn't follow any specific tradition but his own fusion of what he had experienced and what felt good. Many languages were spoken and sang during our "cross-cultural" sweat, Spanish, English, Lakota, Nahuatl, Finnish, Sanskrit, but somehow we all spoke and breathed same language, shared same heart.

Totally free sweat seremony is good and important ideal, but it shouldn't be made into too strict principle. Main thing is that it is not for profit making and if there are practical costs that need to be covered to make the sweat possible, no problem.

[iris27]

5. $9,000?! There really is a sucker

born every minute...

[NJGeek]

6. sounds like a load of bull to me

time to drop the mythology of all religions

[Vehl]

8. Similar to the marketing of Yoga

This is a trend ive seen all over the world. I have nothing against people practicing/following the culture and religions of others.But I do dislike some individuals who capitalize on the interest surrounding these practices into$$.

and as a posted said in this thread...anyone who pays 9000$ for this is an idiot and deserved it :))


Btw....this is similar to the "Christian yoga" that some people teach...

[ZombieHorde]

9. This is as bad as Irish people being Christian or Mexican people being Buddhist. nt