New book explores Sedona's sweat lodge tragedy and how wellness exploits Native culture

The wellness industry is worth trillions of dollars and that sometimes includes traditions that are said to be affiliated with Native American culture.

That all came to a head more than a decade ago, when three people died in Sedona during a sweat lodge ceremony, led by James Arthur Ray.

A jury convicted Ray on three counts of negligent homicide as a result, but acquitted him of the more serious manslaughter charges. He served time in prison and was released in 2013. Ray died in January of last year.

The story of that sweat lodge ceremony — and the larger issues with the wellness sector — are told in the new book, “Plastic Shaman: The True Story of a Deadly Self-Help Retreat and America’s Misguided Quest for Wellness.”

Annette McGivney, a Colorado-based journalist and author of the novel, will be talking about her book at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe tomorrow and joined the show for a deeper dive into the story behind her work.

Full Conversation

MARK BRODIE: Annette, can you remind us about who James Arthur Ray was and what happened at this particular retreat he was leading in northern Arizona?

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: James Arthur Ray was a self-help superstar back in the early 2000s. He did your typical self-help seminar stuff, but he mixed that in with Native American spirituality.

And he was a white guy, he had no connection to Indigenous culture in his own personal history, but it was very lucrative at the time to have these self-help seminars about how to make more money and how to be happy and all that, combined with sacred Native American rituals.

So in October 2009, James Ray led a retreat in Sedona that cost $10,000 per person. It was a five-day retreat, and it was all the kind of stuff that self-help people talk about as far as like improving your life and your business.

But then they did some sacred rituals. They went on a vision quest — his version of that — and then he also, the final capstone experience, was a what he called a Lakota sweat lodge, and said he’d been trained by a Lakota medicine man, which was a lie.

But the 56 or 54 people that went into that sweat lodge believed him and they trusted that he knew what he was doing, and three people that participated in that event died from heatstroke, and then 20 others were taken to the hospital. Some of them were seriously injured and remain injured to this day. And so it became national, international news, actually, right after it happened.

MARK BRODIE: So, what did you learn about maybe how prevalent or how common this kind of thing is, or maybe was at that time, in terms of people who were not Native Americans taking people who in many cases spent a lot of money to do what they called Indigenous ceremonies or practices of some sort?

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: It was quite common, especially in the Southwest, in places like Sedona that are tied to Native American history and culture. But it wasn’t just a new trend at that time in the early 2000s. It dates back to the late 1980s when the New Age movement kind of became popular, a secular spirituality.

So it became really commercially lucrative for people to say they’d been trained by a medicine man or say they were like descended from Native American ancestors, even though they weren’t, as a way to sell these rituals as part of their self-help business.

MARK BRODIE: What is the appeal to people to have that kind of thing, like to go to a sweat lodge or to have, to take part in some kind of Native American ceremony as a way to heal something that you feel might need healing?

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: Right. I dive into that into the in the book because it’s a very complex question. And first of all, Native Americans, traditional medicine people, knowledge keepers, their rituals, their sacred ceremonies are not for sale. They do not endorse any non-Native people commercializing their spirituality.

So as far as the longing goes, like why would someone who’s not Native American want to sit in a sweat lodge and endure that kind of heat or a vision quest, which is very difficult?

And as far as like what I learned from my research and reflecting on my own attraction to Native American culture living in the Southwest, is that white Americans, descendants of European immigrants, many of us, you know, lost our ancestry. We lost our culture when our relatives came to the United States and abandoned their Irish heritage or whatever, English or Spanish. And so because many of us don’t know what our own ancestry is and we don’t know what the rituals are around that, is one thing.

And then the other thing is here we are, we live in the Southwest, we feel like we’re kind of almost indigenous to this land, you know, and and there’s a desire to connect with this landscape. And so, you know, I’m not condemning that desire. I am guilty of the same thing, and I kind of became more aware of the problems with that in researching this book.

MARK BRODIE: Did the incident in Sedona with these visitors and James Arthur Ray, like did that change how non-Native people market themselves, or to the extent that they that others were doing these kinds of ceremonies, like did that put a stop to it in any way?

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: Right. Yeah, I’ve followed this like since I started researching, I mean, I’ve followed it since it happened in 2009. And, you know, living so close to Sedona for so many years, I’ve been aware of what goes on there specifically.

And so, of course, right after the sweat lodge and all the news around that, people like guides in Sedona quit marketing Native American sweat lodges.

But while sweat lodge ceremonies per se have not been happening overtly in the way that they were in the past being sold, there’s still that kind of what I would call adjacent Native American marketing, which is in Sedona, like you’ll find many people saying they are shamans.

MARK BRODIE: What is the response now among Native American communities to the fact that this is continuing to happen and is very lucrative for the people who are kind of appropriating a culture that is not theirs?

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: It makes them mad. You know, like the last thing for the sources that I’ve interviewed for this book — and also I’ve done many stories about Native American culture and Native American issues around their homelands and things like that — I’ve never come across a Native American who supports selling their rituals or participates in that.

They find it very offensive, and either they may protest against it — which I write about in the book, there was a group that protested against James Arthur Ray — or more commonly, they’ll just drop out and ignore it and turn their backs to it.

So like in Sedona, for instance, the Yavapai-Apache Nation, their reservation is right down the road from Sedona, but you’re not going to find them in Sedona participating in any of that Native American-oriented tourism business. They stay away from that, even as they — it would be very lucrative for them to say, “I’m actually Indigenous to this area, and I will take you on a tour.”

But they don’t want to participate. They don’t want to compromise what they believe as the their spiritual relationship to their homeland by making money off of that type of thing.

MARK BRODIE: All right. That is Annette McGivney, a Colorado-based journalist. Her newest book is called “Plastic Shaman: The True Story of a Deadly Self-Help Retreat and America’s Misguided Quest for Wellness.” Annette, always great to talk to you. Thank you so much.

ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: Thank you, Mark.