James Arthur Ray, convicted of three counts of Negligent Homicide for killing three people (and injuring over twenty more) in a racist, humiliating, pretendian debacle in a plastic death tent, will be loose in just 10 Days. He killed three people, but he's being turned loose.
Here's a refresher, from the Usual Suspects:
He wants your money; he'll take your life. Don't let him ever again have a career at this stuff. Don't let him sell his deadly fake rituals. Don't let him lead any kind of ceremony, ever. Don't buy it, don't excuse it, don't look the other way.
James Ray was able to get away with killing these people due to two things: racism and greed. Racism led otherwise-intelligent people to think they could trust a white man to lead ceremonies that Native people had said he had no right or ability to lead. They bought the racist fantasy that they could be the "better Indians" - that they could attain in one week, or a series of seminars, things it takes normal people decades to achieve, if they ever achieve it at all. And they were greedy enough that they bought the illogical proposal that if they did his silly and offensive newage rituals - gross fabrications mixed with pale imitations of spiritual ceremonies he only pretended to know - that it would bring them material riches. They thought they were better than Native people, they thought they were above the laws of nature. And as long as people are willing to believe those kinds of offensive and absurd falsehoods, frauds and exploiters like Ray will get the chance to kill them.
This video perfectly sums up what is wrong with the newagers and others who engage in cultural appropriation. James Ray admits he has no idea what a local, possibly indigenous, woman at this sacred site is saying. She appears to be explaining the site to visitors. Ray not only ignores her words (that he could have recorded and had translated later, if she gave him permission to do so) but instead he talks over her, giving his outsider interpretation of what the symbols at this site mean, and what religious significance he thinks the site has. Of course, he uses appropriated imagery and his fantasies of Indigenous people's traditions for this, though he admits that he "doesn't understand a word" of it.
Her voice is drowned out, and his replaces it. His voice is broadcast over the Internet, as hers is reduced to background noise, and then forgotten. Misinformation and fantasy replace traditional knowledge. The appropriator says some more racist crap, laughs about the Indigenous people, and laughs about how clever he is.
Next James Ray tells us that his pay-to-pray, "prosperity consciousness" group, World Wealth Society, are over in a nearby "vortex". Now he's making money off the sacred site. They have invaded this indigenous sacred site, and are performing their own idea of a death/rebirth ritual. Or something. If Ray's comments and attitude are any indicator, they have no idea what ceremonies have been traditionally held at this site, or which spirits live there, and which things please them... or anger them. Probably no one in his group had any idea how to call to the local spirits (since they don't understand the language) and probably they were so caught up in their pay-to-pray experience that they didn't think to call on some of their own ancestral spirits. By barging into this site and not knowing the people or spirits of the land, even calling ancestral spirits might have resulted in them stirring up things that would clash with the local spirits. Then again, maybe they did get noticed by someone... as death is following James Ray.
If James Ray had listened to Indigenous people, the three people who died in his Sedona deathlodge would still be alive. Indigenous people said, "You don't know what you're doing. Don't pretend you are leading one of our ceremonies. Don't try to lead these fake ceremonies at all. No. Stop."
But like so many lower-profile appropriators of his ilk (who, like Ray, come from the dominant culture and never interact with traditional, non-colonized Indigenous people), Ray decided he knew better than those dumb Indigenes. He knew better: how to better interpret their sacred stories, how to better lead rituals of his own devising on their sacred sites, how to talk to those spirits (despite not understanding a word of their language), how to fulfill the newagers' fantasies of mystical ceremonies they secretly knew no Indigenous person would ever teach them. If the newagers had simply listened to the people who said traditional ceremonies must be in the language of that culture, maybe they wouldn't have paid $10,000 to die.
Multiple witnesses in Ray's manslaughter trial said they trusted that Ray could lead a sweat lodge because he showed them pictures of himself with nameless Indigenous people. Thanks to the efforts of dedicated NDN activists in North America, he would have had a hard time passing off traditional people here as his teachers. (See, NDNs here have phones and email.) So he claimed people from the more rural regions of South America, who have less phone service (and usually no Internet), were his teachers. (This tactic has become very popular with the appropriators, by the way.) But if the consumers of his pay-to-pray pyramid schemes had understood that Indigenous people have names, opinions, and sovereignty over their own cultures, they wouldn't have fallen for this. As long as there is racism, there will be appropriation. And as long as there is appropriation, people will support dangerous frauds like Ray.
Sick of reading about Cultural Appropriation? Bet you're not as sick of hearing about it as I am of having to write about it. But guess what? I'm going to do it some more.
There's nothing new about the James Ray Plastic Death "Sweats". Over the years at least a dozen other newagers have died, and many more have become violently ill, in these pretendian ceremonies with various plastic shamans. You will note however that, with only one exception,* those who have died have not been Indians.
This is almost wholly an appropriator's phenomena. It's what clueless outsiders do when they are messing with something they don't understand; something they don't realize that you can't learn from a book or the Internet; something that is sacred and can't be bought.
It is vitally important that people remember the James Ray Death Camp was not a Native American thing. What happened there were not Native American ceremonies. This was a racist white man exploiting non-Indian people's fantasies of "Vision Quests", "Lodges", "Spiritual Warriors" and wind through their hair while white wolves howl their pretendian names and vast desert vistas sweep away from their yin-yang painted tipis. They didn't want to know anything about real Indians, real Indian lives, and real Indian ceremonies; they want Dances with Wolves and they were gullible and desperate enough to pay some predatory cult leader $10,000 to get that fantasy. The sick irony is that they thought these fake ceremonies, almost-unrecognizable imitations of ways that, when properly embedded in the cultural matrix that is necessary for their existence, are based in humble self-sacrifice for the benefit of one's family and community, would instead make them wealthy and famous, superstars of their lonely ego-driven dramas.
Angel Valley Retreat Center. James Ray's DeathLodge at lower left.
In 1992, the "Men's Movement" amped up the white fascination with romanticized fantasies of Indians. Many white men tried to adopt and adapt a "white man's sweat" as some kind "sweat out the bad shit", misinterpretation of what is actually a prayer ceremony, and not at all what they think it is. Now, after decades of non-Natives teaching non-Natives, we have people who are so far removed from anything authentic, but who fully believe what they are doing is a Native ceremony, that it's no wonder people are still spiritually empty, yet risking their lives for this hollow experience. They try to make it bigger, louder, hotter, and even dangerous now, all the while completely missing the point and purpose of the entire thing.
These appropriators simultaneously believe they can read some books, bang a drum and howl, and become the "better Indian," but that when it all goes off the rails somehow it's Natives that owe them something when they go and damage themselves.
What it keeps coming down to is that non-Natives routinely see Indians solely as spiritual providers, there to tend to their needs. It is so rare to find exceptions to this. White people in particular usually have no shame about being the walking wounded, flinging themselves on the doorsteps of random Indians, often Indians who know no ceremonies, and who are having rougher lives than these entitled white people could ever imagine, yet here come these refugees centering their privileged selves, not caring one bit the damage they do to the people, families and communities they are trying to colonize.
Update: 24 Feb 2018 I originally had an entire section here linking to, and quoting, Sherman Alexie, about appropriation and cultural boundaries, and 101 issues such as "Nothing about us, without us." Today I became aware that about twenty women, most of them Indigenous, have come forward with horrific tales of sexual abuse, harassment and threats from Alexie.
I can no longer in good conscience promote his work. As a rape survivor, as a survivor of stalking, slander and libel by both the serial rapist and the co-conspirators my assailant drafted to help him stalk and libel me, I know what it's like to face this kind of harassment. I know what it's like to be surfing the net and feel punched in the face by seeing someone acting like a man who tried to ruin your life is a great guy.
So, I've removed what Alexie had to say about, cough, listening to the women in your life, ahem, as an analogy for listening to Indigenous people. He went on at length about how other men just don't write or treat women as full human beings, and other writers just don't write Natives as full human beings. I'll let history place his words in context.
In the intervening years plenty has been written about cultural misappropriation. We don't need his words here anymore.
* Note - As archived by Heather at Don't Pay to Pray, one 2009 death in a "lodge" was a First Nations man in Canada, Lawrence Catholique. However, there were some very odd and suspicious things about that incident. Despite being a traditional healer, nothing about the circumstances resemble a sweatlodge ceremony from any First Nations culture that I am aware of. A later article says he had changed the ceremony, "experimenting with wood embers in the lodge". It was a tragic death, but if reports are true, he had changed the ceremony, deviating from the time-tested safety protocols. Also, add third James Ray Death Trap victim, Liz Neumann, to the list of dead newagers. She is the woman who was in a coma, who died after the Don't Pay to Pray blog post.
