The late Thomas Banyacya, Hopi Traditional Spokesman, is seen here in Chaco Canyon. Courtesy Christopher McLeod.
“This is a very sacred kiva,” says the late Thomas Banyacya, Hopi Traditional Spokesman, pointing to an ancient sacred site at Casa Rinconada in northwest New Mexico. “We are looking at the spirit of our ancestors… they are here. They are watching us. We hope they will help Native people to protect their land and sacred sites,” he says in a frail voice recorded in archival footage.
Over the past three decades, the Sacred Land Film Project (SLFP) has produced films about how mainstream American culture antagonizes Native American sensibilities around spirituality and sacred sites. Casa Rinconada is one quintessential example—a cultural hub of Ancestral Puebloans, where thousands of New Age seekers gathered for the Harmonic Convergence in 1987, littering the sacred kiva with crystals, cremated human remains and one curious looking teddy bear wax candle.
[…]
“While producing films on threats to indigenous sacred sites, I spend a lot of time listening to communities all over the world explain the most urgent threats. I’ve been really struck over the years by the fact that universally, right up there with mining, logging, dams and land grabs, there’s deep concern about New Age appropriation of sacred places, cultural rituals and spiritual traditions,” says Christopher McLeod, Director of SLFP.
In northern California, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe can empathize with the predicament of the Navajo. The Harmonic Convergence also congregated on Mt. Shasta, a mountain deeply sacred to the tribe. “The Harmonic Convergence of 1987 unleashed an overwhelming flood of seekers, hundreds of New Agers leaving crystals and medicine wheels all over the mountain. Later, there were sweat lodges for hire, and now even cremation remains poured into a sacred spring. How do we stop this and redirect this desperate search for meaning and connection?” wonders McLeod.
The Winnemem, known as the Middle Water People, trace their ancestry over millennia along the watershed south of their revered Mt. Shasta. The Winnemem believe they emerged from the spring on Panther Meadow, where New Agers often congregate—drumming and singing and leaving offerings behind, including ashes of the departed.
“We believe this spring is so sacred. We only go there once a year to sing at the doorway of our creation story,” says Chief Caleen Sisk, spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu, in Pilgrims and Tourists, a SLFP film that explores the impact of New Age tourism on Native communities in the Russian Altai Republic and Mt. Shasta. “People dumped cremations right into this spring,” she says. “Cremations are a pollutant… everyone downstream is drinking that water. Do you put cremations on the altar in the Vatican?” she asks incredulously.
Besides cleaning the offerings in the spring, the Winnemem have to contend with thousands of climbers who attempt to summit Mt. Shasta. “On our mountain we have 30,000 visitors,” she says. “Non-indigenous people need to understand that there is a way to be there, a way of walking on that land without destroying it… people can admire the meadow from the edge.”
Ann Marie Sayers, Costanoan Ohlone, believes that contrasting value systems among Natives and non-Natives lead to cultural appropriation. “These places call for humility and respect,” she says. In another SLFP film clip posted as part of a five-clip playlist on YouTube, a white woman naively claims that in her past life she has been black, Native American, Chinese and Egyptian and should not be denied access to Native sacred sites.
“New Agers look at traditional Native [cultures] for some answers to their spiritual bankruptcy. In an effort to find themselves, they are appropriating a lot of Native belief systems, to plug into for a weekend,” says Chris Peters (Pohlik-lah/Karuk) in a film clip from SLFP’s 2001 film, In the Light of Reverence.
The Winnemem say their ceremony is delayed every year, because the spring has to be cleaned from the offerings left behind. As the Winnemem youth remove bone fragments and cremation ashes from the spring, Chief Sisk remarks, “People can live without oil. They can live without gold, but nothing can live without water.”
It’s perfectly possible for white people to feel all spiritual and connected to nature, the universe, everything, without co-opting what you think is a peoples’ culture, and without invading and fucking up their sacred places. Once again, white people manage to make everything about them. If nothing else, stop thinking you’re honouring your dead by dumping them in places sacred to other people, and polluting while you’re doing it. How in the hell is that spiritual? Isn’t it about time you just left us Indians alone? Go, discover your own roots, there’s nothing wrong in that. A whole lot of cultures have a history of sweating, many of them white cultures, and in many of those cultures, such traditions are carried on. You don’t need to up and decide that the “Native American” way of doing something is so much more golly gosh darn pure and special”. That’s racist crap, perpetuating the noble savage nonsense, so cut it the fuck out.
No, there isn’t a place for you in various Indigenous ceremonies. You’ll live. Go and discover those ancient, traditional ceremonies you are a part of, learn about your own self instead.
Just reported, Pokémon Go players are getting in on the disrespect, too. Play your games, people, but pay the fuck attention to where you are, yeah?
According to CBC News, Gouchie was paying respects at her father’s gravesite on Sunday when she noticed dozens of Pokémon Go players searching the sacred First Nations burial ground.
“It’s sacred there,” Gouchie told CBC. “This land was once my ancestral land. This is the only little piece of land inside Prince George that is ours, and you are disrespecting it. My dad, my uncles, my cousin, my great grandmother are all buried there.”
The burial ground is open to the public within the Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, but Gouchie says the presence of a Pokéstop — a virtual location in the game where Pokémon Go players gather supplies to catch monsters — is disrespectful.
“This has to stop,” said Gouchie. “This game has only been live in Canada for one week. It’s only a matter of time before that burial site is filled with Pokémon Go people.
“I was thinking, I need our K’san [traditional] drummers out here so we can block both these gates and … stop this,” she said.
Gouchie does not blame the players, but does blame the game creator Niantic. She has submitted a request to the game developers to have the Pokéstop removed and reported the incident to her tribal council.
Full Story here.
Quacks, as I’ve seen these New Age hippies so disparagingly called, have a lot in common with cranks (the nasty religious types): They need to feel self-important, they have little regard for the wellbeing of capital-O Others, they have a coded language for in-group identification, they’re motivated by a sense of fear (particularly a fear of death), and they place higher value in loyalty and unit cohesion than critical thinking. Quacks never rid themselves of faith--they merely reinvested it in another institution. The ringleaders of both quacks and cranks seldom believe their own lies, they just see a group of easily manipulated authoritarians desperate for someone charismatic to confirm their biases.
The only thing that used to make quacks harmless was a lack of numbers. Now that they’re getting enough bodies, they’re doing all the same harmful shit you see “organized religion” do. Quacks are all about world peace until you suggest that their practices--cultural appropriation and dismissal of minorities--are precisely what prevent peace from occurring.
Yeah, I’m likely guilty in Shasta. I like to think I know better now, but there were at least 2 different times when I was a kid that I went to sacred or sacred-adjacent (I’m really not entirely sure) land for “Outdoor School” and related programs. Worse: I’ve read a lot about Pueblo and Anasazi lands and as late as age 30, maybe even 35 I would have taken a chance to travel to Chaco Canyon without spending a single moment to think about whether that was a good idea or not, and for several years after “thinking about it” wouldn’t have actually stopped me.
At least this kind of resource is available now for me to show my own kids. I wish my parents had known about it 30 years ago when it started up so they could show it to me (or, hell, themselves and my school admins)
CD:
That alone makes a massive difference. Education is the solution to so many problems.
So much new age bullshit attached to sauna culture here.
But at least we’re ruining our own folklore, and it’s nowhere near as serious or organized as the destruction that happens at Native American sites (usually on private property, private group of friends, all privately running around naked in the midsummer dew rubbing all kinds of herbs all over).
I’ve always been fascinated with sacred sites, though -- and I would still love to visit them, but at least with resources like these, I can try and do that in a respectful, appropriate manner, and even if I only get the ‘visitors’ tour’ and not the full in-depth experience, I can appreciate that.
This, I honestly don’t understand. If they stopped to think about it for one moment, they would realize that there is nothing worse than dumping your dead (cremated or not) into a source of water. New Age? Connected to Nature? Like hell. It’s gross, it’s disrespectful, it’s pointless. Bottom line, it is harmful to those who actually care for those sites and their sacredness.
It’s like they see sacredness as just another resource to exploit for their selfish whims.
rq:
Oh gods, really? I am so sorry. I’m a for real, from back in the actual day hippie, but I have always managed to be a respectful one.
Fuck, me neither. I was shocked by that -- who came up with this idiocy?
Joseph @ 5:
Honestly, I don’t think they see sacredness at all. They certainly don’t understand it.
Caine
Don’t be sorry, it’s all connected to the revival of folklore and seeking out one’s historical roots and it just so happens that our ancestors had all the answers!!!! So you can cure yourself of any ill with the right swattage in the sauna, drinking the right herbal teas, and wearing only natural fibres. I mean, a lot of it is fun: the dancing, some of the ritual, getting in touch with your roots (in a historical sense). When it becomes the ultimate spiritual guide with a distinct christianized sheen, though, you’re kind of losing the fun parts.
rq:
That does sound fun. It’s too bad some people can’t leave it there.
It’s perfectly possible for white people to feel all spiritual and connected to nature, the universe, everything, without co-opting what you think is a peoples’ culture, and without invading and fucking up their sacred places.
White people’s ritual appears to consist of building a Starbucks and a parking lot. We have sooooo many sacred places! And nothing makes me feel cooler and more connected to nature than a vented fruit smoothie lotta-chocca methacchino!
Marcus:
Your sekrit name wouldn’t be Crystal Beaver Rainbow Running Fox, would it?
Your sekrit name wouldn’t be Crystal Beaver Rainbow Running Fox, would it?
Ahem, that’s Crystal Unicorn Rainbow Running Fox. And I’m a spirit warrior.
Can I get that with lowfat skimmed milk?
sez Caine @10: “Your sekrit name wouldn’t be Crystal Beaver Rainbow Running Fox, would it?”
[very annoyed expression] It was, before you spoiled it!
(pouts @cubist:#12) that was so much better of a comeback than mine.
rq @4:
Pity. The Ancient Latvian Wisdom passed down to me was that it was good for hangovers.
Rob @ 14:
Don’t be keeping us in suspense, are they good for hangovers?
Caine @15: I don’t know, I’ve only done a few, and none after a serious night of elbow bending. Don’t care for them myself. Anyway, I discovered early on in my drinking career that drinking lots of water during and after was the best preventative.
Littering with cremated human remains? Spreading the ashes without a permission, putting them into a spring? That’s anti-social in spades to say the least.
It’s been a while since my last hangover, but Finnish* sauna doesn’t actually cure it, but you may feel less like a shit thanks to the endorphins, also you’ll be clean if you wash, so you only smell of old booze, not rancid sweat, puke or shit. You also usually remember to drink water after sauna.
I’m not sure if Latvians have some secret addition to the sauna experience that will cure hangover (beer will only postpone it). 8-)
__
* As for the new age stuff in sauna here, I haven’t come across to it that much, some people do fragrances (no, just no) or smear honey on themselves.
Ice Swimmer @ 17:
I know I’ll probably be sorry for asking, but why?
It’s supposed to moisturize your skin and make it more healthy and have other great effects on you. The honey is washed off afterwards.
Any regrets? 8-)
Ice Swimmer @ 19:
Yes. :D What a waste of honey that is.
Caine @20:
Damn right!
Rob
The Latest Latvian Wisdom has it that you’re not supposed to use the sauna to cure a hangover, esp. if you combine it with the ancient practice of drinking beer (instead of water) to cure your hangover. Something about dehydration…
If I come out of the sauna wrong, I get migraines, so I don’t even try it on a hangover -- all that means is I get to skip the step where you’re supposed to jump into freezing cold water.
Ice Swimmer
The honey is also supposed to get stuff out of your pores, like a scrub -- it’s especially good if it’s slightly granular. It’s one of those things -- if you make your own honey, you usually have some that’s a couple years old sitting around not doing anything else useful.
Some people enjoy swatters made from stinging nettles. :D Each to their own, I guess.