In 2009 in Sedona, Ariz., three non-Native people died in a false sweat lodge ceremony run by famed self-help grifter James Ray. The victims were part of a $10,000 retreat that promised them spiritual ascension and healing via sacred Native teachings. Ray, a white millionaire who rose through the self-help ranks by marrying his questionable résumé of Indigenous knowledge with techniques for amassing personal wealth, claimed the sweat lodge ceremony was taught to him by a Lakota medicine man. The resulting tragedy left three families destroyed, dozens of people injured, and Indian Country reeling from the pain of the capitalization and bastardization of stolen ceremonies.
In Plastic Shaman: The True Story of a Deadly Self-Help Retreat and America’s Misguided Quest for Wellness, out Sept. 15, award-winning author and journalist Annette McGivney explores the sweat lodge tragedy by taking readers through the darkest depths of a multibillion-dollar self-help industry that exploits Native cultures and those pursuing ever-elusive spiritual ascension.
McGivney has written about Native issues for decades for major media outlets, including The Guardian and Outside. While Plastic Shaman originally started as an endeavor to write about the crimes Ray was ultimately charged with, it ballooned into the story of America’s many crimes against Native peoples, the resulting spiritual void and the lasting divide between Indian Country and the rest of America.
McGivney deftly weaves together three narratives: that of victim James Shore and his widow, Alyssa, as they turn away from middle-class life in the Midwest in search of authentic spiritual experiences, which leads them to fall under the influence of gurus who guarantee healing for the right price; the emergence of a self-help industry that preys on America’s hunger for enlightenment; and that of Indian Country protecting its sacred ceremonies in a society that once relentlessly destroyed its traditions, only to later demand possession of them.
McGivney told Native News Online she was clued in to the larger story of how Indian Country was affected by the sweat lodge deaths while she was on assignment as a journalist.
“I did a story about the Yavapai Apache tribe in Central Arizona and how they were on this forced march to Eastern Arizona, like so many of the Trail of Tears stories,” McGivney said. “When I was interviewing Yavapai Apache people about that, they told me that some of their members had been protesting against James Arthur Ray.”
McGivney spent six years combing through the case files, interviewing family members and spending time with members of the First Nations Eagle Feather Council, made up of representatives from more than a dozen tribal nations, including American Indian Movement veterans Lance Morris, Sylvia Wilson and Ivan Lewis, who waged spiritual warfare against Ray and prayed for his victims.
The result is a searing look at America’s insatiable and conflicting appetites for healing and wealth. Plastic Shaman spans three genres — true crime, history and narrative nonfiction — seamlessly flowing together to tell the story of a nation that created its own spiritual void. As McGivney dissects the angst of modern life, she wraps hot New Age trends in the context of the country’s dark milestones in its destruction of Native people: the Wounded Knee Massacre, the Skeleton Cave Massacre, and the federal Indian boarding school system.
McGivney sets the stage with the opening pages in Sedona in the immediate aftermath of the false sweat lodge as Ray flees the gruesome scene. The following chapter jumps to the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, where Avrol Looking Horse is the 19th Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe and Bundle, to tell the story of White Buffalo Calf Woman, a figure in Oyate culture who gifted the tribe their spiritual practices, including the sweat lodge. The story that follows Ray’s meteoric rise and fall in self-help, mainstream America’s craving for Native culture sanitized by stereotypes, and Indian Country’s resounding persistence in the face of endless exploitation.
McGivney also gives ample space to Standing Rock, exploring the phenomenon that drew attention from around the globe and brought Native issues into many people’s awareness for the first time. She examines the event as a fleeting example of a world that is possible when Native people, values, and traditions are given due reverence.
The book is an indictment of America’s obsession with self-help — and ultimately absolution for its sins against its first people — via “authentic” Native American ceremonies without coming into contact with the people from whom the ceremonies were brutally stolen.
The story culminates in a moving scene in which Shore’s widow and children, Inaya, Amrita and Darshan, finally meet the spiritual warriors from the council, who have been praying for them in the years since the tragedy. Wilson, Ford and Lewis intend to hold the ceremony for the family at the Yavapai place of emergence; but, National Park permit restrictions ironically sequester them to a nearby public park. Lance leads them in a ritual modified for non-Natives, ending with the family releasing balloons into the sky.
The scene ends with the following passage:
He motioned toward Ivan and Sylvia. Like Lance, they had survived boarding schools, were dedicated AIM activists and had spent their entire adult lives fighting to protect their spiritual tradition.
“If our people didn’t stand up and fight, we wouldn’t be here right now,” Lance said. “Without prayer, without spiritual warfare we would be extinct. We are spiritual warriors,” he continued as he approached Inaya, Amrita, and Darshan, handing each of them a balloon. “And you are spiritual. The work you did today makes you spiritual warriors. Not the fake kind, but the real kind.”
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