Curt Anderson, a former colleague at the Rocky Mountain News, was kind enough to send us this  Sept. 19, 1999, column he wrote during his days at the Daily Times-Call in Longmont, Colo. Sadly, it’s as relevant now as it was then. We’ll let this be the last word on the subject today. Wouldn’t it be great if people didn’t have to issue these reminders so routinely?
It’s a very odd situation at Naropa University, the purported bastion of enlightenment and academic freedom.
The situation stems from a lawsuit filed by a former student that alleges Naropa hired a Native American Studies teacher who lied about his heritage and credentials, mistaught Native American ceremonies and allowed non-native students to use eagle bones and feathers in violation of Lakota canon and federal law.
According to American Indian Movement leader Russell Means, Naropa also turned a cold shoulder to Lakota tribal elders who traveled to Boulder to discuss the situation.
The lawsuit produced a very prickly and un-Naropa -like response. Students and other supporters apparently organized a telephone campaign to complain to area media about coverage of the situation. One point that every caller insisted on making was that the former student involved in the lawsuit is a white woman married to a Lakota man. Either the callers were unable to convey, or editors were unable to understand, why this racial distinction was relevant.

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Tags: "Sweat lodge" deaths, buffalo post, Native American news

We’ve been trying to report on the reactions to it, rather than the event itself, but the story on the three deaths as a result of a so-called sweat ceremony in Arizona run by a white New Age guru keeps growing. So here are a couple of follow-up stories. This Arizona Republic piece focuses on tribes’ response to it.

“If you ask just about any Native American out there, they will be appalled by this,” says Freddie Johnson, language and culture specialist at the Phoenix Indian Center. “It’s disturbing to hear that there were three deaths from this so-called sweat lodge.”

As have many people, Johnson slams the fact that people were charged more than $9,000 to participate in the five-day retreat that included the fake sweat, saying it would be akin to charging people to attend church.

The Times of London weighs in, here, on the actual event, as does the video above, both of which make clear the perversity that twisted what should be a respectful and spiritual Native ceremony.

Gwen Florio

Tags: "Sweat lodge" deaths, buffalo post, Native American news

Rapid City (S.D.) Journal columnist Jim Kent gets it right in this piece that’s a terrific follow-up to the recent deaths at a high-priced so-called sweat ceremony run by a white self-help guru in Arizona.

Kent’s column imagines a Native man in priest’s garb, celebrating a Mass – of sorts. He writes:

“No, this isn’t a new version of the Catholic Mass, nor is the man a Catholic priest. He just ‘digs’ the Catholic religion, ‘respects’ its history and culture and finds himself inexplicably ‘drawn; to all things Vatican. He wasn’t born Catholic; never attended Catholic church or schools. But this recent hub-bub about Jesus Christ and the DaVinci Code has grabbed his ‘inner spirit.’ He’s thinking that’s because ‘way back’ his ninth cousin on his father’s side may have been 1/16 Catholic. He just feels it.”

Oh, yeah. As Kent writes, if other groups tried to appropriate the tenets of the major religions for their own purposes – and then charge for it! – there’d be, ahem, hell to pay.

“In what other culture,” he asks, “do they ‘honor’ you by stealing your religion and then destroying its principles along the way?”

Indeed.

With a weekend coming, we’re inclined to feel optimistic. So maybe, just maybe, some good will come out of this whole “sweat-lodge” tragedy, in that people will rightfully become suspicious of ceremonies purporting to be something they’re so obviously not.

Gwen Florio

Tags: "Sweat lodge" deaths, buffalo post, Native American news, Native American religion