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Playing Indian
Monday February 8th, 2010
 
by Judith Weisenfeld

On February 3, 2010, the Yavapai County, Arizona Sheriff's Department arrested self-help counselor James Arthur Ray, charging him with three counts of manslaughter for the deaths that took place in the course of his October 2009 "Spiritual Warrior" retreat. Prior to the deaths, Ray had advertised the retreat as part of his program to "create harmonic wealth in all areas of your life" and offered secrets he said he had "searched out in the mountains of Peru, the jungles of the Amazon (and a few other places I don't care to recall)." On the final evening of the five-day $9,000 retreat, participants gathered inside a tarp-covered wooden sweat lodge for a ritual of purification they hoped would attract material bounty.  About an hour into the "sweat lodge" event, some participants began to vomit and pass out from the high heat, dehydration and lack of ventilation. Before it was over, nearly two-dozen people were hospitalized, two people were dead and one more would die a week later.   ... read more


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New Muslim Cool
Wednesday February 3rd, 2010
In a time of danger and promise--a man, a family and a generation come of age. New Muslim Cool is Islam as you have never seen it. It is also hip-hop as you ... read more
 
Conversation with Ronit Avni
Wednesday February 3rd, 2010
Filmmaker and human rights advocate Ronit Avni discusses her work and screens portions of her documentary Budrus, the story of a Palestinian-led ... read more
 
Capricology
Wednesday February 3rd, 2010
Religion Dispatches has enlisted Anthea Butler, Salman Hameed, Henry Jenkins and Diane Winston to produce Capricology, and ongoing b ... read more
 
New Directions in Religion, Politics and the Media
Tuesday November 10th, 2009

Thursday, November 12, 2009
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Playing Indian
Source:
Posted By: Judith Weisenfeld
Monday February 8th, 2010
 

Motivational speaker James Arthur Ray was recently arrested on manslaughter charges related to the deaths of three participants in a sweat-lodge event that he conducted in Arizona late last year.



The story has received wide press coverage mainly because of Ray's self-help industry connections to Oprah Winfrey and Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret. But the appropriation of Native American spiritual practices by non-indigenous people has a long history in the United States, as chronicled on Web sites like New Age Frauds and Plastic Shamans and in studies like Philip J. Deloria's Playing Indian.



Judith Weisenfeld is Professor of Religion and Associate Faculty in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University.  She is the author most recently of Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929-1949 (University of California Press, 2007).
www.annenberg.edu